Paris Hilton - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Hilton was born in New York City, New York. Her mother, Kathy Hilton (née Kathleen Elizabeth Avanzino), is a socialite and former actress, and her father, Richard Howard "Rick" Hilton, is a businessman. She is the oldest of four children: she has one sister, Nicholai Olivia "Nicky" Hilton (born 1983), and two brothers, Barron Nicholas Hilton II (born 1989) and Conrad Hughes Hilton III (born 1994). Her paternal great-grandfather was Conrad Hilton, who founded the Hilton Hotels. She is of Norwegian, German, Italian (from a maternal great-grandfather), English, and Irish ancestry. She is a half-niece of two child stars of the 1970s, Kim and Kyle Richards.

She was raised Roman Catholic and still attends Mass. Hilton moved between numerous exclusive homes in her youth, including a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Hamptons. As a child she was good friends with other socialites, including Nicole Richie and Kim Kardashian.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Hilton attended the Buckley School and the exclusive St. Paul the Apostle Church and School, where she graduated in 1995. She then attended her freshman year of high school at the Marywood-Palm Valley School in Rancho Mirage, California from 1995–1996. In 1996, when Hilton was 14 years old, her family moved to the East Coast. In New York, she briefly attended Convent of the Sacred Heart (while Lady Gaga was a student there) in 1996 before transferring again to the Dwight School. At 16, Hilton spent one year at the Provo Canyon School, a school for emotionally troubled teens. She then attended the Canterbury Boarding School, in New Milford, Connecticut from the fall of 1998 to February 1999 for her junior year, where she was a member of the ice hockey team. In February 1999, the month she turned 18, she was expelled from Canterbury for violating school rules. After being expelled from Canterbury, she returned to the Dwight School before dropping out a few months later as a high school junior. She later earned her GED.