Jana Novotná was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on 2 October 1968 and arrived on the tour in 1985, ending that year ranked 305th. Her game was built around the net: she attacked on almost every point and finished with volleys and overheads, and the Hall of Fame describes her as "perpetual motion on court". Her early coach was Mike Estep; from the early 1990s she was coached for nine years by the four-time major champion Hana Mandlíková.
Doubles brought her success first. With Helena Suková she won Wimbledon in 1989 and 1990 and Olympic silver medals in 1988 and 1996, and on 27 August 1990 she became world No. 1 in doubles, a ranking she held for 67 weeks. She went on to win 12 women's doubles majors with partners including Gigi Fernández, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis, and four mixed doubles majors.
In singles she reached the 1991 Australian Open final, but she is best remembered for Wimbledon. In the 1993 final she led Steffi Graf 4–1 in the third set and had a game point before Graf won the last five games; at the trophy ceremony she cried on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent. She lost the 1997 final to Hingis in three sets, then won the season-ending Tour Championships, beating Mary Pierce, and finished 1997 at No. 2, her career high. In 1998, aged 29, she finally won Wimbledon, beating Nathalie Tauziat 6–4, 7–6, and added the Wimbledon doubles with Hingis. She also took the singles bronze at the 1996 Olympics.
She spent seven years in the singles top 10 and won 24 singles titles. Wikipedia counts 76 women's doubles and four mixed titles, 104 in all, while the Hall of Fame gives 100 career titles. She won 17 major titles, all but one in doubles.
Novotná retired in 1999. She commentated at Wimbledon for the BBC, won the Ladies' Invitation Doubles there several times and later coached the future major champion Barbora Krejčíková. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2005 and died in November 2017, aged 49.