Asia Carrera, born Jessica Andrea Steinhauser on August 6, 1973, in New York City, New York, was raised in Little Silver, New Jersey. She's an actress and a nude model, having posed for multiple men's entertainment magazines such as Penthouse and Playboy. Her father was German-Swiss and her mother was Japanese. She is the firstborn daughter and the eldest child of four, being the older sister to her two younger brothers and one sister. Director Bud Lee was her husband. In 2003, he and his wife Asia Carrera, divorced each other and seperated. A gifted girl, during her childhood and a very talented woman, she taught herself to read at age four, performed piano at Carnegie Hall twice before age 15, and scored over 1440 on the SAT, earning a National Merit Scholarship and a Garden State Scholarship. At 16, she taught English at Tsuruga College in Japan but ran away from home at 17 due to parental pressure, later experiencing homelessness. She attended Rutgers University on a full scholarship, majoring in Japanese and business, but did not graduate due to financial struggles, turning to exotic dancing to support herself. Her dancing career led her to nude modeling and, subsequently, the adult entertainment industry in Los Angeles in 1993 at age 20. Of German and Japanese descent, Carrera used pseudonyms like Asia, Jessica Bennett (for a Playboy pictorial), and intentionally misspelled her stage surname after actress Tia Carrere for legal reasons. Her adult film career, spanning 1993 to 2003, included over 400 films with studios like Vivid Entertainment (where she was a contract performer from 1994 to 1999), VCA, and Evil Angel.