Early life and education
Asia Carrera was born in New York City to a Japanese father and German mother. She was raised in Little Silver, New Jersey, attending Little Silver Public Schools and Stuyvesant High School.
She studied piano as a child, and performed at Carnegie Hall twice before the age of 15. When she was 17, she ran away from home because she felt her parents put too much pressure on her to succeed academically.
She won an academic scholarship to Rutgers University and is a member of Mensa.
Adult film career
Carrera worked during the early 1990 as a dancer at several go-go bars in her home state of New Jersey. After doing at least one photoshoot for an adult magazine, she put together a demo porn tape in 1993. At the end of that year she relocated to California to break into the pornography business and she announced her retirement at the end of 2003. She is sometimes credited as Asia or Jessica Bennett.
Carrera has also been involved in writing, producing, and directing movies, as well as doing all her own make-up and hair-styling, and doing much of the hair and make-up for other actresses in the same movies. As is common practice among adult film actresses, the name "Asia Carrera" is a pseudonym. According to interviews, she chose the stage name surname from actress tia carrere , intentionally misspelling it for legal reasons.
