Gordana Lukač Koritnik was born in Zagreb, where she attended high school and graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1974. Most of her professional career up to 2003, when she was appointed Ombudsperson, she practiced law as an attorney in private practice. Her father, brother and sister are all attorneys as well.
In her legal practice, Gordana Lukač Koritnik often represented women victims of domestic violence and other cases from the area of family and labor law related to human rights and gender equality.

In 1995, she accepted the invitation of the Women's Human Rights Group B.a.B.e., which was in search of legal experts who would provide direct legal aid for women, as well as an expert for analysis of laws from gender perspective. This entailed learning about international gender equality mechanisms and protection and promotion of women's human rights. By educating herself and trying to pass on the knowledge to others in an environment lacking information about this broad aspect of human rights protection, Gordana Lukač Koritnik attended numerous important world-wide conferences and meetings, including annual sessions of the UN Commission for Women in New York and Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, the Council of Europe, Stability Pact and other global forums. She also took part in meetings of world-wide networks of NGOs dealing with human rights and gender equality. She was one of the authors of the first CEDAW shadow report, which was, along with the first regular report of the Croatian Government on the status of women in the Republic of Croatia, submitted to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women by Croatian women's NGOs.

During her work at B.a.B.e. and other women's organizations (Center for Women War Victims, Autonomous Women's House Zagreb, Women's Studies), Gordana Lukač Koritnik initiated and managed several projects of legal analysis and monitoring of laws, writing legal drafts and amendments, analysis of court rulings, and participated in public debates and education about women's human rights and gender equality. She launched and managed an internationally acclaimed project SEELINE, which included comparative analysis of national legislations from gender perspective in 10 countries of Southeastern Europe and planning campaigns to improve and harmonize them with global standards. In the document accompanying its session in Geneva in 2003, the UN Commission for Human Rights declared SEELINE one of the two best projects on this issue in Europe.

The Croatian Parliament appointed Gordana Lukač Koritnik, an independent, to the position of the Gender Equality Ombudsperson on October 1, 2003.