Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman with whom then-United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while Lewinsky worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. The affair and its repercussions, especially the impeachment of Bill Clinton, became known as the Lewinsky scandal.

Monica Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Southern California on the west side of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills. She is of Russian Jewish descent. Her father is Dr. Bernhard Lewinsky, an oncologist; her mother, Marcia Lewis, is an author. Her parents are divorced. Her stepfather, R. Peter Straus, is a media executive. For her primary education she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air. She later attended Beverly Hills High School, but transferred to and graduated from Pacific Hills School, formerly known as Bel Air Prep, in 1991.

She attended two-year community college, Santa Monica College, and completed her undergraduate studies at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, graduating with a psychology degree in 1995. Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked at the White House as an unpaid summer intern starting in July 1995, moving to a paid position there in December 1995.