White was born May 13, 1965, in Dunedin, Florida. As a child, she sang in her family's gospel group, The White Family Singers, which comprised her parents, sister, and brother. White sang at talent contests and performed in a local rock band called White Sound as well. She later studied vocals and music engineering at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, and while in college, she started to write her own music and perform in local clubs. She was a classmate of The Mavericks' Paul Deakin.
White made her first national appearance in 1988 on the talent show You Can Be a Star on The Nashville Network (now known as Paramount Network), where she won first prize, which included a recording contract with Capitol Records. Although her debut single "Flying Above the Rain" received airplay in the Southern United States, it failed to chart and White was dropped from Capitol's roster without releasing anything else.
She later joined a publishing house owned by Ronnie Milsap and began to take acting lessons, eventually performing at local dinner theaters. After attending an ASCAP showcase in 1991, she was invited by Rodney Crowell to sing in his backing band. White was then signed in 1992 to RCA Records, releasing her debut album Lead Me Not a year later. The album, produced by Crowell, included three singles: "What a Woman Wants", the title track, and "Lay Around and Love on You". All three of these singles entered the Billboard country charts, and although none reached Top 40, the album peaked at No. 36 on the Top Heatseekers charts.
Also included on this album were two songs that would later become singles for other artists: "Only God (Could Stop Me Loving You)", which she recorded as a duet with Toby Keith, had previously been a cut on Billy Ray Cyrus's 1994 album Storm in the Heartland and would later become a minor hit in 2003 for the Canadian band Emerson Drive, while "Flies on the Butter" was also a minor hit in 2004 for Wynonna Judd, who recorded it as a duet with mother Naomi on her 2003 album What the World Needs Now Is Love.
Don't Fence Me In was the title of White's third RCA release, with the title track being a cover of the Cole Porter-written song made famous by The Andrews Sisters. Its lead-off single was "Ready, Willing and Able", which was previously recorded by Daron Norwood in 1995 as the title track to his second album. White's rendition of the song was a Top 20 hit in 1996, although the only other single from the album did not reach Top 40. In 1997, White also sang duet vocals on Travis Tritt's single "Helping Me Get Over You", a release from his album The Restless Kind, which peaked at #18 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. 1997 also saw White's final release for RCA, a greatest hits package called The Best of Lari White which reprised all of her singles to that point including the Tritt duet, as well as two newly recorded tracks, and the non-single "Itty Bitty Single Solitary Piece 'o My Heart", from her debut album.
White's third recording contract came in 1998 when she signed to Lyric Street Records. Her first release for the label was the single "Stepping Stone", which was also the title track to her fourth studio album. This song became not only a Top 20 country hit, but also her only entry on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 73. Following it were "Take Me" at No. 32 and "John Wayne Walking Away" at No. 64.
White appeared in several movies. In the opening and closing scenes of Cast Away (2000) she played "Bettina Peterson", the woman Tom Hanks meets who gives him road directions. She appeared alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw in the 2010 film Country Strong.
In 2006, White was an original cast member of the Broadway musical Ring of Fire. That year, she made music history as the first female Producer of a male superstar's album with the release of Toby Keith's White Trash with Money. The album was ultimately certified platinum by the RIAA.
She debuted a cabaret production in 2007 called My First Affair.
In 2010, Danny Gokey released the White-penned track "I Will Not Say Goodbye" as a single. White, who wrote the song with her husband Chuck Cannon and Vicky McGehee, was inspired by the untimely death of a friend's son.
In 2014, a group of 24 authors and songwriters assembled a collection of stories in a book entitled The Shoe Burnin': Stories of Southern Soul. Included alongside the hardback publication is an audio CD that includes 18 original works by the songwriters featured in the book. White is a featured storyteller in The Shoe Burnin as well as the Producer of the audio component of the project.
In September 2017, White was diagnosed with cancer. Exploratory surgery in October 2017 revealed advanced peritoneal cancer. She died in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 23, 2018, at the age of 52. She was survived by her husband, Songwriter Chuck Cannon, and three children.
