Aria Giovanni is a nude actress and model of Italian-Yugoslavian, French, Irish, German and Native American heritage. She was born on November 3, 1977 in Long Beach, California but moved to Orange County when she was a teenager. She had a difficult childhood due to the fact that she was extremely shy and found it hard to socialize with other children. She would rather spend her time reading or studying.

Aria states to have gone to rehab at age 12 due to alcohol and drug abuse and stayed there for a total of 26 months. During that time, besides getting her problem under control she managed to finish two years of classes and upon finally leaving rehab, enroll in high school as a junior. She was always a good student, and ended up graduating from high school and enrolling in college by the time she was 16. She was a biochemistry major in a San Diego junior college, while also tutoring others in math and science and waitressing on the side. She came to a decision to try modeling and stated answering ads in the newspaper.

She posed for several amateur sites, but it was only when she met Suze Randal, a glamor photographer who sent her pictures to "Penthouse", that her career started to take off. She ended up being on the cover of "Penthouse" in September 2000. At around the same time she was transferring to the University of California, but eventually decided to give up on school and focus on modeling. She was in the film "Survivors Exposed", a Survivor TV series spoof in 2001 and in "Shipmates", a TV dating show, in the same year.

Giovanni was briefly married to former Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5, in 2005.