Rose was born in Salisbury, Maryland in the United States to a New Zealander mother and an American father, and was raised in Mount Maunganui, Bay of Plenty in New Zealand. She attended Mount Maunganui College in 2000-2001 for part of her secondary school education. Afterward, she was homeschooled while attending an acting class at Studio 111 in Auckland. In January 2004, she moved to Auckland to study make-up at the Academy of Film and Television Work. She had previously done make-up and costume work on a New Zealand short film titled Us, as well as doing extras' make-up on the set of Peter Jackson's King Kong. She played a leading role in a short film titled Dearly Beloved. She also played in the scatologically themed short film Unleash the Fury.

After Rose's parents divorced in 2004, she returned to Salisbury, in May 2005, to live with her father while saving for university. She then enrolled in the New York Film Academy (NYFA) at Universal Studios in Universal City, California.

After graduating from NYFA's one-year acting for film program in April 2006, Rose lived in Los Angeles, California. In her search for acting jobs, she found a listing for an independent film project The Children of Anchor Cove on Craigslist. She was one of about 80 actresses who auditioned for the lead part. After two callbacks, she was offered the role of Bree. Jessica signed a non-disclosure agreement and was told that the project would consist of a series of videos released to the World Wide Web over the Internet. She was initially unpaid for the project but as lonelygirl15 grew popular, she and co-star Yousef Abu-Taleb received salaries.

In October 2006, the United Nations chose Rose to participate in an ad campaign to promote the UN's antipoverty cause.

She was signed by UTA and was cast for a role in the 2007 Chris Sivertson film I Know Who Killed Me, which starred Lindsay Lohan but received terrible reviews. She then played "Tina" in Perfect Sport, by first-time director Anthony O'Brien. She plays "Jen K." in the ABC Family TV series Greek.

Jessica won a 2007 Webby Award for Best Actress, for her role as Lonelygirl15.

She was "Today's Girl on Maxim" on March 24, 2008.

On April 4, 2008, it was announced that she is to star in another internet based video program called Blood Cell

On June 12 2008 Jessica announced in a blog that she was starring in a new web series called Sorority Forever from Big Fantastic, the creators of "Prom Queen." The series will follow three incoming freshman in “the hottest sorority on campus� and while it will have some Gossip Girl elements to it, it will also contain a lot of the mystery similar to Prom Queen.

The lonelygirl15 video blogs, first appearing in the summer of 2006, featured Rose as a 16-year-old girl named Bree posting under the alias loneygirl15. The videos, which seemed genuine and presented lonelygirl15 as an actual person, initially dealt with typical teenage angst issues but soon after introduced a bizarre narrative surrounding secret occult practices within her family. The series was an immediate hit and became the most subscribed channel on YouTube, but suspicions arose if the videos were genuine or some sort of a promotional gimmick. An investigation by the Los Angeles Times would reveal the lonelygirl15 videos as a work of fiction. A firestorm ensued in the news media through September 2006, during which Jessica Rose and the creators of lonelygirl15 were interviewed in magazines and television shows, and gained international attention.

On August 3, 2007, Bree was killed off, as Rose's contract was not renewed because she had taken a role on Greek as "Jen K.", Rusty Cartwright's girlfriend.

lonelygirl15 is an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006, and ended on August 1, 2008.

The show focuses on the life of a fictional teenage girl named Bree, whose YouTube username is the eponymous "lonelygirl15", but the show does not reveal its fictional nature to its audience. After the fictional status of the show was revealed in September 2006, the show gradually evolved into a multi-character show including both character videoblogs and action sequences, with a complex story universe involving "trait positive girls" who are sought by an evil organization called "The Order".

Lonelygirl15 first came to international attention ostensibly as a "real" video blogger who achieved massive popularity on YouTube, a popular video sharing website. The show was eventually proved as a hoax by suspicious viewers as featuring a fictitious character played by American-New Zealand actress Jessica Rose.

The three creators of Lonelygirl15, first revealed by the The New York Times, were Ramesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, California, Miles Beckett, a surgical residency dropout turned filmmaker, and Greg Goodfried, a former attorney with Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, LLP.

The series began on June 16, 2006, and was slated to run through August 1, 2008. New videos appeared, at a clip of 4 to 5 a week, first on YouTube and lg15.com, also on MySpace. As of July 2008, the LG15 series has had more than 110 million combined views.

Lonelygirl15's first spin-off show KateModern, ran from July 2007 through June 2008 on Bebo, and took place in the same fictional universe. While a separate series, KateModern and lonelygirl15 live in the same fictional universe.

Along with Amanda Goodfried, an attorney who worked with Creative Arts Agency (CAA), the creators of lonelygirl15 created LG15 Studios to produce original interactive content online. LG15 later morphed into EQAL, Inc. April 2008, with receipt of $5 million in venture capital to expand their offerings

The Lonelygirl15 series finale took place on August 1, 2008, with three ambiguous episodes. The first showed Danial and Jonas heading their own ways as Sarah films everything and the rest go to the hospital. It was shot on a beach and was the last scene from the previous episode, filmed from a different angle. The scene left several unanswered questions, leaving fans frustrated. The last video again claimed that someone else had taken control, their numbers are growing and on the video clips of Jonas and Sarah said that they have chosen their leader and the first disciple. It also said that 'they' were now controlling and manipulating them. A reference or the channel for the new series that will be taking place in United States with old characters from the series along with characters from KateModern. The finale will start at 8am and will include 12 episodes released over a 12 hour period in one day

It has also been announced a new series that will take place in Italy with a partnership between EQAL and CBS.

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Lonelygirl15 debuted on YouTube posing as a real 16-year-old video blogger with the eponymous username. At first, the videos covered normal, everyday subject matter, as the title character dealt with typical teenage angst, but quickly morphed into a bizarre narrative that portrayed her dealings with secret occult practices within her family and included the mysterious disappearance of her parents after she refused to attend a "secret" ceremony prescribed by the leaders of the family's cult. In lonelygirl15's earliest videos, she posted video replies to, and dropped the names of popular YouTubers, which attracted the attention of their fans. To further the initial illusion that Bree was a real girl, a MySpace page was set up for her and she began meaningfully corresponding with many of her fans. Several fans of lonelygirl15's video posts began to wonder if Bree was, in fact, a real person or if the posts were part of a teaser campaign for a television show or an upcoming movie (similar to the viral marketing used to hype The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield). Others felt that the blog might be part of an alternate reality game.

In early August 2006, fans began an active discussion on the www.lonelygirl15.com message boards and instigated an all-out investigation into the details behind lonelygirl15, pointing to small inconsistencies within the videos as evidence that the story might not be genuine. Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Rushfield was the first to provide proof of a hoax, when he wrote of Shaina Wedmedyk, Chris Patterson, and an anonymous law student, who set up a sting on MySpace to reveal that the Creative Artists Agency was behind the videos. Eventually it was revealed that 16-year-old "Bree" was played by 20-year-old New Zealand actress Jessica Rose.[9][10]

Because of lonelygirl15's YouTube popularity, media sources seized upon the story, extensively covering both the search process and the eventual "outing" as a fictional series.

Afterwards, numerous news sources and talk shows featured interviews with the creators and actors of the series itself.

New York Times reporter Virginia Heffernan expanded on the series of revelations on September 12 out with an article which confirmed Jessica Rose's identity, and revealed the identities of her "co-conspirators", Ramesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, Calif., and Miles Beckett, a doctor-turned-filmmaker. Software engineer Grant Steinfeld was also involved in this project, as a photographer. Amanda Solomon Goodfried assisted in their efforts to hide their identities as well as posed as "Bree"'s online alter-ego. Ms. Goodfried's father-in-law, Kenneth Goodfried, handled various legal matters. The personnel involved worked under a non-disclosure agreement, according to Grant Steinfeld. Steinfeld has verified most of this information to the Times, and provided photographs he took on set of Ms. Rose as proof.[2] Also on September 12, the three main creators gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times revealing the third major partner as Greg Goodfried.

Since the fictitious nature of lonelygirl15 has been revealed, the storyline continued to develop via new videos posted to both YouTube and Revver. However due to the recent partnership with YouTube and Myspace, videos stopped being posted on Lonelygirl15's Revver account, and now are only viewable via Youtube and MyspaceTV. The relationships between future LG15 properties and various online video websites, what will be shown exclusively on which services etc. is not known at this time.