Sola Aoi was born on November 11, 1983, in Tokyo. As a student, she worked at various part-time jobs in the food-service industry, such as pizza parlors, pubs and Su Shi bars with the intent of becoming a pre-school Teacher. While in her third year in high school, Aoi was scouted in Shibuya by a talent agency for gravure modelling. She decided to enter the adult entertainment industry with the aim of eventually working on TV and in other parts of the entertainment industry, stating that "If there was only the AV industry, I couldn’t do it."
Aoi appeared as a gravure idol in the June 2002 issue of Bejean and then made her debut in adult videos (AV) at age eighteen in July 2002, with Happy Go Lucky! for the Alice Japan studio, part of the Kuki Inc. group which was one of Japan's largest producers of pornography at the time. The next month, she appeared in the AV The Blue Sky on the Samansa label for the Max-A studio, also part of the Kuki group. For her video appearances in 2002, Aoi was awarded the Second Place Award as Best New Actress in the 2002 X City Grand Prix Awards. Aoi continued making videos for both Alice Japan and Max-A for almost two-and-a-half years until late 2004.
During this period, Aoi also started making appearances in mainstream media. In May 2003, she had a role in the theatrical release Gun Crazy 4: Requiem for a Bodyguard and from July to December 2003, Aoi had a role in the TV Asahi J-dorama Tokumei Kakarichō Tadano Hitoshi. For her starring role in the pink film, Tsumugi (制服美少女 先生あたしを抱いて Seifuku bishōjo: Sensei atashi wo daite), released to theaters in July 2004, Aoi was given a Best Actress Award at the 2004 Pink Grand Prix ceremony. The film was ranked the fourth-best pink film release of the year.
In November 2004, Aoi left Alice Japan and Max-A to move to the newly formed studio, S1 No. 1 Style, part of the large Hokuto Corporation. Her first video for S1, Sell Debut, was directed by Hideto Aki and released on November 11, 2004. Aoi continued making about one video a month for S1 until mid-2006. By this time, Aoi had become one of the most popular AV idols in Japan. Her name was the second most popular internet search on a female Celebrity in Japan for 2005.
Aoi's popularity enabled her to enter further into mainstream entertainment, including film, television and radio. In early 2005, she starred as a high-school girl in Director Keisuke Yoshida's film Raw Summer (なま夏 Nama-natsu). The romantic comedy, released theatrically in Japan in January 2005, won the Grand Prize in the Off Theater Competition at the 2006 Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival where it was screened in February 2005. Along with another AV idol, Akiho Yoshizawa, Aoi appeared in the late-night TV Tokyo manga-based production Jōō (嬢王) which aired in 12 episodes from October to December 2005. Aoi later returned in a special guest appearance for the 2009 sequel to the show Jōō Virgin (嬢王 Virgin).
As a singer, Aoi put out a CD in 2006 titled "Hadaka no Kiss". She was a member of the Ebisu Muscats.
Aoi traveled to Thailand for a part in a mainstream Thai teen movie, Hormones (Pid Term Yai, Hua Jai Waa Wun), released in March 2008. She plays a Japanese tourist who brings one character to the brink of infidelity to his girlfriend. Hormones won the Jury's Special Prize at the fourth Asian Marine Film Festival in Japan which Journalist Wise Kwai ascribed to Aoi's presence.
Aoi made her debut in another Asian entertainment market when she appeared in a Korean TV drama Korean Classroom in May 2009. The four-part series follows three Japanese girls traveling to Korea and co-stars fellow AV Idols Mihiro and Rio. Aoi was subsequently scheduled to appear on several Korean variety shows while in Korea to promote the series. Back in Japan, Aoi starred as a zombie-killing stripper in Director Takao Nakano's May 2010 comedy horror film Big Tits Zombie, a film adaption of the cult manga Kyonyū Dragon. Later that year Aoi was in Hong Kong starring in the erotic thriller Revenge: A Love Story which reached theaters in December 2010.
In late April 2010, Aoi's Twitter account was discovered by many Chinese netizens, despite the social networking site's typically being inaccessible in China. Fans of the AV model began distributing software allowing them to bypass the censorship of Twitter. Following the 2010 Yushu earthquake in China's Qinghai Province, Sola Aoi announced that she would raise funds to donate to the earthquake victims. This was received by a mixed response by Chinese netizens, with some praising her help and others finding it unseemly. In November 2010, she opened a microblog on Sina Weibo, China's most popular domestic microblog Service, posting in Japanese, English, and Chinese. In her first six hours on Sina Webo, she attracted 130,000 followers and by September 2012 that figure had risen to more than 13 million. Her sizable following in China has also led to her debut as a singer in Mandarin Chinese with the song "mao yi" (毛衣 or Sweater) which was released digitally for mobile phone and computer download.
In April 2011, Aoi had a starring role in the Indonesian horror movie Suster Keramas 2 (Shampooing or Evil Nurse 2), making her the third Japanese AV Actress to appear in Indonesian films recently. (The others being Rin Sakuragi in the original Suster Keramas and Maria Ozawa, known in Indonesia as "Miyabi", in the 2009 film Kidnapping Miyabi.) The earlier films, although very successful, engendered protests from conservative Muslim groups in Indonesia, so Aoi's trip to Indonesia and participation in the film were kept secret. Aoi said that working in Indonesia gave her pause but she wanted to expand her mainstream career and that she was "really looking forward to coming into contact with foreigners and engaging in communication."
