Shaw was born in Manhattan, a borough of New York City, on July 13, 1962. Inspired by country rock musicians such as the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, she began writing songs at an early age. Later, she and her sister, Lori Shaw, found work performing together in the Los Angeles area.

Eventually, Shaw moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she found a publishing contract and a record deal. A minor single, "Break My Heart", was released in 1984 on the MPB label, peaking at #61 on the Hot Country Songs charts. Her first major hit as a songwriter came in 1992, when Garth Brooks recorded her song "The River" and took it to the top of the Billboard country charts. A year later, Doug Stone reached Number One on the country charts with Shaw's "Too Busy Being in Love". Later that same year, another Shaw-penned song — John Michael Montgomery's "I Love the Way You Love Me" — reached the top of the country charts and won an Academy of Country Music award for Song of the Year.

In 1995, Shaw signed to Reprise Records, releasing her debut album In Full View that year. Three of this album's singles — "Cry Wolf", "Tears Dry" and "Forgiveness" — all reached the lower regions of the Hot Country Songs charts. That same year, Brooks reached Number One with another one of Shaw's compositions, the song "She's Every Woman". In 1996, Shaw received a Top New Female Vocalist nomination from the Academy of Country Music, losing to Shania Twain.

Shaw's second album for Reprise, Victoria Shaw, was released in 1997. However, it produced no chart singles. In 1998, Shaw collaborated with Brooks, Billy Dean, Faith Hill, Olivia Newton-John, Neal McCoy, Michael McDonald and Bryan White for a charity single (written for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation) entitled "One Heart at a Time", which charted at #56 on the Billboard Hot 100. Also that year, Trisha Yearwood recorded the song "Where Your Road Leads", which Shaw co-wrote and originally recorded on In Full View. Yearwood's rendition of the song, which was recorded as a duet with Brooks, served as the title track to her 1998 album Where Your Road Leads, from which it was released as a single.

After exiting Reprise in 1998, Shaw released her third album, Old Friends, New Memories, in 2001 on the Taffeta label. This album included her renditions of the songs that she had written for other artists. In the mid-2000s, Shaw returned to songwriting as well. She has won two Daytime Emmy Awards, in both 1999 and 2000, for co-writing songs for the daytime dramas One Life to Live and As The World Turns. Two of her songs, Emerson Drive's "A Good Man" and Eric Church's "Two Pink Lines", both charted in 2006. She and Paul Worley co-produced Lady Antebellum's self-titled debut album, which was released in April 2008. Later that same year, Shaw released her fourth album, Bring On the Love. Shaw also produced Jessie Farrell's second album, Good, Bad & Pretty Things, which was released in Canada in October 2009. In addition, she co-wrote Sarah Buxton's "Outside My Window."