Anne Vyalitsyna was born in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, formerly known as Gorky. Both her parents are doctors; her father is a sports doctor for a soccer team and her mother is a pediatrician. She started her professional modeling career at the age of 15, after IMG scouts discovered her in Saint Petersburg while looking for new faces for MTV's Fashionably Loud Europe. She entered and ended up winning their modeling contest along with a contract with IMG Paris and, later, IMG New York.