Aishwarya Rai was born in Mangalore to Krishnaraj Rai and Vrinda Rai. sHe has an older brother, Aditya Rai, who is an engineer in the commercial navy and also co-produced one of her movies RAI, Dil Ka Rishta (2003). From a young age, his parents moved to Mumbai where she attended the Arya Vidya Mandir high school in Santa Cruz. Rai then entered Jai Hind College at Churchgate for one year, and then moved to Ruparel College in Matunga to finish her HSC studies. He did well at school and plans to become an architect and went on to study architecture. Can communicate in several languages, including mother tongue Tulu, as well as Hindi, English, Tamil and Marathi. She started studying architecture but gave up studies to pursue a career in modeling.

Miss World. While studying architecture, Rai began modeling on the side. Miss India contest in 1994, won the second place behind Sushmita Sen, and was Miss India World. He won the Miss World title the same year, where she also won the Miss Photogenic. She left the university after winning the competition and spent a year as Miss World in London. Rai then started working as a professional model and then moved to the current profession as an actress.