Paris Whitney Hilton (born February 17, 1981) is an American television personality and business woman. She is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels. Born in New York City and raised there and in Beverly Hills, California, Hilton began her modeling career as a teenager when she signed with New York-based modeling development agency Trump Model Management. Her lifestyle and rumored short-lived relationships made her a feature of entertainment news and tabloid magazines, and Hilton was proclaimed "New York's leading It girl" in 2001.

Hilton was born in New York City. Her mother, Kathy Hilton (nee Kathleen Elizabeth Avanzino), is a socialite and former actress; her father, Richard Howard "Rick" Hilton, is a businessman. She was raised in the Catholic faith. Hilton 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 Hilton Hotels. Hilton has Norwegian, German, Italian, English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. She moved frequently in her youth, living in a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, Beverly Hills and the Hamptons. As a child, she was friends with other socialites, including Ivanka Trump, Nicole Richie and Kim Kardashian.  Growing up in Los Angeles, Hilton attended the Buckley School and St. Paul the Apostle School, finishing elementary school in 1995. Her freshman year of high school (1995-96) was spent at the Marywood-Palm Valley School in Rancho Mirage, California. In 1996, Hilton and her family left California for the East Coast. At age 16, Hilton spent one year at the Provo Canyon School for emotionally troubled teens. She then attended the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut from fall 1998 to February 1999 (her junior year), where she was a member of the ice hockey team. In February 1999, Hilton was expelled from Canterbury for violating school rules, returning to the Dwight School before dropping out a few months later. She later earned a GED certification.  Hilton began modeling as a child, originally at charity events. When she was 19, she signed with Donald Trump's modeling agency, T Management. Hilton said that she "wanted to model", Trump wanted her at his agency, and she was "loving" the work. While modeling, she became a daily feature of entertainment news for her partying; according to Vanity Fair, Cisco Adler (producer of Sweetie Pie, in which Hilton acted) called her "a young party girl who gets sucked into the L.A. party scene and grew up a little too fast". In 2001, Hilton developed a reputation as a socialite; she was called "New York's leading It Girl", whose fame was beginning to "extend beyond the New York tabloids". Around that time she made a cameo appearance in Zoolander and appeared on several magazine covers, including the UK's Tatler, Italy's Giola and the US' Vanity Fair and FHM. Hilton also appeared in Vincent Gallo's "Honey Bunny" video. In 2002, she played a lead role in the straight-to-video horror film, Nine Lives. According to Beyondhollywood.com, "Hilton's presence in the cast is the film's main marketing point, which is plainly obvious by the fact that she's front and center on the box art and is the only recognizable name in the cast". The website noted that her character was, basically, herself: "Hilton plays--what else?--a spoiled American socialite who shops on three continents in one day. The script is even clever enough to take a few jabs at Hilton's real-life social standing, even mentioning that she's been on the cover of a few sleaze rags in her day". That year Hilton became engaged to fashion model Jason Shaw, but they broke up in early 2003.

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Hilton began modeling as a child,