Early Years
The daughter of a highway engineer and secretary, Donna Rice spent her childhood in Florida, Georgia (in Atlanta), and South Carolina. She began a modeling career at age 13 and maintained a high grade point average in high school while also attending church services and working part-time as a clothing store sales clerk.
Rice graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1980 as a biology major, where she was both an honors student and cheerleader. College graduation was also a critical time for her, she said: "I really didn't know where to go next. I had big expectations, and not a lot of guidance." After she graduated from the university, she entered the Miss South Carolina/World beauty pageant and won. She went to New York to compete nationally.
Rice has openly said she was a victim of date-rape "on the way to New York by an older man who was involved with the pageant system, and lost my virginity at that time." She says the rape was "the turning point in my life, the catalyst that propelled me further into an unhealthy lifestyle". While she did not win the beauty pageant, she remained in New York to pursue an acting and modeling career.
After a relative lack of success in New York City, Rice moved to Miami, where she worked as a television commercial actress for a pharmaceutical company and a small marketing business, as well as appearing in an episode of the TV series Miami Vice. In March 1987, she met former Senator Gary Hart at a Miami fundraiser.
Read more about this topic: Donna Rice Hughes
Famous quotes related to early years:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)