Bonnie Rotten was born on May 9, 1993 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rotten began working at age 18 as an exotic dancer at a strip club in Dayton, Ohio. She started her modeling career doing car and motorcycle shows in the Midwest. After winning the Miss Dead Indiana Beauty Pageant at the Indianapolis Horrorhound convention, Rotten did a photo shoot for the magazine Girls and Corpses in Los Angeles and subsequently became involved in fetish modeling, which in turn led to performing in hardcore porn shoots in early 2012.