Her family was reasonably financially comfortable from its inception; her father, before becoming a lawyer, was a psychiatrist who specialized in shrieking therapy. While a child, she could hear the therapies through the vents in her room, and would act them out in front of her mother. The family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where she grew up attending Edgemont Elementary School, Glenfield Middle School, and Montclair High School as well as the Morristown-Beard School. After one year she left the high school for the Professional Children's School in New York City. Her siblings are Rafael, Dante, and Pia. When her father and her mother eventually separated in 1993, Ricci stayed with her mother, who took custody of the children. Ricci has not spoken to her father since 1993.[citation needed] Of her siblings, she is closest to her brother Rafael. After her parents' divorce, Ricci experimented with self-injury, and began cutting herself as a child as she felt that she couldn't handle her body developing; Ricci stated that this problem affected her self esteem as a young teenager.
