Stephanie Marie McMahon was born into power on September 20, 1976 in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Vince and Linda McMahon, and the sister of Shane. She grew up learning the means of wrestling from both the real-life and fantasy aspects. Shane would practice wrestling moves on her at their home in Greenwich...she says it was like learning self-defense. One of her earliest memories was being backstage after a show, and George "The Animal" Steele came into the back, all wild and wooly as he was, with his green tongue hanging out, and it scared Stephanie so bad she ran and hid behind her father, who, along with George, started laughing. Stephanie made her first official appearance with the WWF at Rowdy Roddy Piper's Halloween party, and around age 13 she started appearing in WWF Magazine ads to model various wrestling paraphanilia.

On January 8th, 2006, the WWE announced that Stephanie and husband Paul Levesque (WWE wrestler Triple H) were expecting their first child.