Campbell was born in Westminster, South London. Her mother was a Jamaican-born dancer, Valerie Campbell, who told Arena in 1996 that her daughter's unnamed father is a mixed-race man of part-Chinese ancestry.
She attended Dunraven School, a comprehensive school run by Inner London Education Authority in Streatham and attended the London Academy for Performing Arts.
A graduate of the Italia Conti Academy stage school, Campbell's first appearance to a wider public was in February 1978 when she was cast as a pupil to appear in a music video with Bob Marley for his song Is This Love?. In 1982, she appeared in another music video, this time as a tap dancer for Culture Club's "I'll Tumble 4 Ya".
On graduating from Italia Conti, her looks ("My features are completely ethnic", she said in the September 2003 issue of Essence magazine. "And I'm proud of them.") led her to become a fulltime model, creating a high-profile career and creating two spin-off companies, NC Connect and a self-named line of perfumes.
Her charity work mainly focuses on the children and people of Africa, including working with Nelson Mandela, since 1997. In 2005, she helped to create and participate in 'Fashion Relief' for Hurricane Katrina victims, raising over a million dollars.
Modeling
Aged 15 and while still a student of the Italia Conti Stage School, Campbell was spotted by Beth Boldt, former head of Synchro models agency, window-shopping in Covent Garden. In April 1986, she appeared on the cover of Elle, when a black model had to cancel out of the appearance, and was replaced by Campbell. By August 1988, she had appeared on the cover of the French Vogue as that publication's first black cover girl, and she completed campaigns for Ralph Lauren and François Nars.
Her modelling career started as a catwalk model, but she was quickly picked up for various high-profile advertising campaigns for Lee Jeans and Olympus Corporation, which brought her to the American market. The highpoint of her career was in the early 1990s, when she was part of the two major supermodelling powerhouses, the Big Six and the Trinity, (with Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington).
She has walked the catwalk for many fashion designers, including Gianni Versace and Valentino. Naomi did tumble over on the catwalk at Vivienne Westwood's Anglomania fashion show in 1994. Naomi was the first black model to appear on the cover of Time magazine and the French and British Vogue magazines. She was the first black model on the cover of Vogue Nippon. She has also appeared on the covers of Harper's Bazaar and ELLE magazine. In total, Naomi Campbell has been on over 500 magazine covers.[citation needed]
She posed nude for Playboy magazine, and for a series of lesbian-erotic photos with Madonna in the latter's book Sex.
Music
Campbell starred at age 7 in the music video for Bob Marley and the Wailers song Is This Love. Campbell later appeared in music videos for artists such as Michael Jackson,Culture Club, Jay-Z, P.Diddy, Bob Marley, The Notorious B.I.G, Macy Gray, Prince, Usher and Madonna's music video, "Erotica", with Ingrid Casares on 12 October 1992. She had previously appeared in George Michael's music video, "Freedom! '90", where she lip-synched to his song along with other models. She was also to be seen in Frankie J's music video, "That Girl".
Campbell has tried her hand at singing. Her single "Love and Tears" was a hit and her solo album Baby Woman sold over 1 million copies worldwide (but mostly in Japan) despite being panned by critics, and she was featured on Vanilla Ice's single "Cool as Ice". In 1995, her collaboration with Toshinobu Kubota, "La La La Love Song" the theme song to Long Vacation, became a no. 1 hit in Japan, with the single selling approx. 1,856,000 copies. That same year she sang on Quincy Jones' album "Q's Juke Joint".
