Vanessa Minnillo

Vanessa Joy Lachey (née Minnillo; born November 9, 1980) is an American model, actress, and television personality. She was born at Clark Air Base in Angeles City, Philippines, to Vincent Charles Minnillo and Helen Ramos Bercero. She gained national attention through the beauty pageant circuit when she was crowned Miss South Carolina Teen USA and subsequently won Miss Teen USA in 1998. Her win marked the first time a contestant from South Carolina took the national title, and she was also named the pageant's Miss Congeniality.

During her childhood, Lachey relocated frequently due to her father's service in the United States Air Force. She lived in Washington, California, Nevada, Florida, Germany, and Japan, attending eleven schools in nine years. Following her parents' separation in 1983 and divorce in 1986, her mother left the family when Lachey was nine years old. After briefly living in Turkey, she and her brother Vincent Jr. returned to live with their father around 1991 following Operation Desert Shield. They settled in Charleston, South Carolina, where she attended the Roman Catholic Bishop England High School and resided with her father and stepmother, Donna.

Following her success in pageantry, Lachey expanded her career into television hosting. She served as a host on MTV's The Morning After in 2003 and Total Request Live from 2003 to 2007. In 2005, she joined Entertainment Tonight as a New York City-based correspondent. She hosted the Miss Teen USA 2004 and Miss Universe 2007 pageants, co-hosted the ABC competition series True Beauty from 2009 to 2011, and joined ABC's game show Wipeout in December 2011. In 2020, Lachey and her husband Nick became the co-hosts of the Netflix reality series Love Is Blind.

In addition to hosting, Lachey built an acting portfolio across several television series and film projects. Her early screen appearances included roles in series such as That's Life, City Girls, 30 Rock, Psych, Hawaii Five-O, and How I Met Your Mother. In 2008, she featured as Amy in the parody film Disaster Movie. She later starred as Tracy in the 2015 NBC sitcom Truth Be Told. In 2021, Lachey was cast as Jane Tennant in the CBS crime drama NCIS: Hawaiʻi, portraying the first female lead in the NCIS television franchise until the series concluded in 2024.

Lachey has also participated in commercial campaigns and publishing. She appeared in advertisements for Bongo Jeans, launched a cosmetics line with Flirt! Cosmetics at Kohl's in 2007, and graced the covers of publications including Maxim, Parents, and People. In 2021, she published her first book, Life from Scratch: Family Traditions That Start with You, co-written with Dina Gachman. In her personal life, she married singer Nick Lachey on July 15, 2011, after dating since 2006, and the couple has three children.