Richa was born and brought up in Lucknow belongs to Uttarakhand. Since her school days when she was studying at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited School, Lucknow, she wanted to be an actress. After completing her 12th Standard she won the Miss Lucknow title after which she decided to get into modelling. However, her journey to the modelling world was a struggle because of her conservative background and her family's reservations on the showbiz industry.

After she did a correspondence course and graduated from Delhi University,^[10] she became an air hostess with Kingfisher and was simultaneously looking out for modelling assignments. Jabbar Kalarakkal gave her first ad film.^[10] She starred in a few Malayalam ads and soon, she made her film debut too.^[11]

She made her debut in the 2011 Malayalam film Vaadamalli. In the same year, she starred in two other Malayalam films, Bangkok Summer and Sandwich opposite Unni Mukundan and Kunchako Boban respectively. Richa won the Asianet Film Awards for Best New Face of the Year '12 (Female).

She was next seen with Allari Naresh in her first Telugu film Yamudiki Mogudu.^[9]

She made her debut in Kannada film industry in 2015 and was cast along with Golden Star Ganesh in Buguri.^[12]

She is making her Bollywood debut with Traffic releasing 6 May 2016 alongside the Ensemble cast of Manoj Bajpayee , Jimmy Shergill , Divya Dutta and others.^[13]

She was last seen in Telugu movie, Eedu Gold Ehe, starring Sunil.^[14]

Presently she is filming a multi cast Malayalam movie Crossroad (Lakehouse). Crossroad is expected to hit theaters in 2017.^[15]