Christiane Amanpour is a television host and journalist. She is of British and Iranian descent and is a naturalized American citizen.
Christiane Amanpour was born in the West London suburb of Ealing, the daughter of Mohammad Taghi and Patricia Anne Amanpour.
Her father was Iranian, from Tehran. Amanpour was raised in Tehran until the age of eleven. Her father was a Shi’ite Muslim, and her mother was a Catholic.
Her parents sent her to a boarding school in England when she was 11 years old, after she had completed the majority of her primary school education in Iran.
Christiane Amanpour attended Holy Cross Convent, an all-girls school in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, before transferring to New Hall School, a Roman Catholic school in Chelmsford, Essex, when she was 16.
Amanpour earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Rhode Island. She worked in the news departments of local radio stations while in college, and after graduation in 1993, she was hired by CNN as an entry-level desk assistant in the foreign office in Atlanta, Georgia.