Aaliyah Hadid was born on October 19, 1995 in "The Brick City" of Sanford, North Carolina. She describes growing up in a broken home, where her mother was a drug addict and her father was mostly absent. Growing up, she frequently moved from place-to-place, claiming to have not lived in one spot for more than a year, and having moved up to 20 times during her life with her family. It may well have been these experiences that motivated her to take her education to its fullest potential. She attended the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, NC, where she studied Spanish, Political Science and Communications. Aaliyah achieved success in this aspect as she stated she was the first in her family to have attended college and not start a family as a teen. During her college years, Aaliyah was a dancer and escort, beginning with work for Eros and Backpage. After a dangerous experience living with her first "sugar daddy", Aaliyah looked for other options. Rather than return to college, she searched online and found the adult entertainment website Sexy Jobs where she made a profile. She was contacted by an individual and went to Florida to meet him, where she soon discovered the man was a pimp.