She stepped into the limelight in 1986 by claiming the title of Miss Denmark at age eighteen, and representing her country at the Miss Universe pageant. This provided an invaluable springboard to launch herself as an international model. She left her home soon afterwards to pursue modeling in Paris.



In 1991, she starred in the music video for Chris Isaak's song "Wicked Game". In the video, she is depicted as Isaak's lover. Christensen and Isaak were both topless for much of the video, though her nudity is relatively concealed with clever camera angles. It was decided that full frontal nudity would not be suitable for mainstream release. Viewers still reacted to Christensen's sexually suggestive performance, and the video was later featured on MTV's "Sexiest Video of All-Time".