stella is the daughter of patricia ruiz and ernest eugene white. at age 14, she was discovered by renee salud and became a runway and commercial model. stella attended and graduated high school from trinity university of asia formerly known as trinity college of quezon city. during her undergraduate studies in mass communication at an exclusive school for women in quezon city, stella left school to pursue her modeling career in singapore, malaysia and hong kong. she has since toured internationally and appeared as an image model for popular clothing apparel, accessories and other fortune 500 companies (guess jeans, coach, red bull, rusty lopez, fiona of robinsons, speedo, house of sara lee, and many others). in 1996, stella joined the miss philippines beauty pageant and became one of the finalists. she was later on disqualified for being a nonresident.