According to director Jack Hill this was originally intended to be a sequel to his Coffy (1973), also starring Pam Grier, and in fact the working title of the film was "Burn, Coffy, Burn!". However, American-International Pictures decided at the last minute it didn't want to do a sequel, even though "Coffy" was a huge hit. That's why it's never said exactly what kind of job Foxy Brown has--"Coffy" was a nurse and since this was no longer to be a sequel, they couldn't give Foxy Brown that job and didn't have time to rewrite the script to establish just what kind of job she had.
Filming took a total of 17 days.
Pam Grier told Rolling Stone she chose to be nude in many of her early films because she wanted to push the limits of how Black women were perceived in the acting world. She said, "I call it the 'Brown Nipple Revolution.' We weren't the epitome of sexual attraction for the male audience, in movies, magazines, anything. We were told our brown nipples weren't attractive. I was trying to break that line of what was acceptable in society."
This film was seized and banned in the UK under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959.