Born Jacinta Paige Butcher on 6 October 1979 in Perth, Western Australia and grew up in the Perth suburb of Attadale. With her father a previous model and her mother a fashion designer, modeling seemed like an obvious career choice but she had planned to become a veterinarian. She attended Santa Maria Catholic College. she started modeling at age 13 and at age 15 was discovered by IMG models by winning Covergirl cosmetics supermodel search for Australia. She permanently moved to NYC at age 18 where she still lives.