Deanna Merryman

Deanna Merryman is an American model and actress born in 1972. Raised as the daughter of a clergyman from Virginia, she attended high school alongside Leeann Tweeden. In the mid-1990s, Merryman worked as a dancer, including a period at PT's Show Club in San Antonio, Texas, in 1992. She subsequently transitioned into a career in fitness, glamour, and print modeling.

Merryman first gained public attention in modeling competitions during the late 1990s. In 1997, she participated in Playboy's Great Lingerie Model Search. The following year, she competed in the Miss Hawaiian Tropic beauty pageant, subsequently securing work as a model for the Hawaiian Tropic brand. In 1998, she was also featured in a pictorial for Celebrity Sleuth. Continuing her work as a fitness model, she appeared on the cover of Iron Man Magazine in 1999.

In 1999, Merryman expanded into television by starring in the British ITV documentary soap drama Desperately Seeking Stardom, where she was credited as Deana. The program followed six aspiring performers living together in California while trying to establish acting careers in Los Angeles. During the filming of the show, Merryman balanced her modeling work and employment as a waitress while pursuing various acting opportunities, chronicling her auditions for a horror film and a role on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.

Her appearance on Desperately Seeking Stardom helped her land professional television acting roles, including appearances on the series Baywatch and the sitcom Veronica's Closet. In 2000, Merryman was selected by photographer Mark Daughn for a photo shoot advertising the Internet company Bomis. She continued her collaboration with Daughn over the next several years, with her photographs appearing in Mystique Magazine in January 2003, the book Mystique: Models of Mystique, and a pictorial in the October 2003 issue of Playboy.

Merryman continued to take on various entertainment and modeling projects throughout the mid-2000s. In 2004, she made a stage appearance at the Uptown Cabaret in Charlotte, North Carolina, and co-starred in the comedy film Busty Cops. She was featured in an October 2004 issue of Celebrity Sleuth, as well as the 2005 Beach Babes calendar photographed by Sam T'Ang and the 2005 Mystique calendar.

In 2006, Merryman relocated from Los Angeles, California, to Florida, where she hosted an event at Club Deep in South Beach sponsored by FireStar Film Works and Phunhauz Ent. By 2011, she was residing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she worked professionally as a makeup artist.

Merryman also received media coverage for her personal relationship with stock car racing driver Jeff Gordon. The pair met in 2000 in Palm Beach, Florida, while Merryman was working as a cosmetics advisor at a Neiman Marcus store, and later dated for eleven months. Their relationship was cited during Gordon's divorce proceedings, and Merryman discussed the relationship during an interview featured in the October 2003 issue of Playboy magazine.