Mila Bogdanovna Jovovich was born on December 17, 1975, in Kyiv. Her grandfather and great-uncle, Bogdan and Branko Jovovich, participated in the attempt to overthrow Josip Broz Tito. In the early 1960s, they arrived in Kyiv with a friend, Milita Perovic, sailing from Albania to Odessa on a Soviet ship under the guise of tourists, escaping persecution. Mila's father, Bogich (Bogdan) Jovovich, was a doctor from Montenegro, and her mother, Galina Loginova, was a Russian actress known in the USSR and the USA. Her maternal ancestors came from Tula. In her childhood, Mila attended kindergarten in Dnipropetrovsk but mostly grew up in Moscow, from where her mother moved to Kyiv. According to Mila, she was born in Ukraine 'mostly by chance.' In 1980, the family moved to London, then to Sacramento, USA, and seven months later settled in Los Angeles. There, Galina tried to continue her acting career but did not succeed due to the language barrier, and she and her husband worked as servants for a while. Mila began her modeling career at the age of 9, first appearing on the cover of the Italian magazine 'Lei.' At 12, while in the seventh grade, she dropped out of school to focus on her modeling career. In 1994, at the age of 19, she obtained US citizenship.

Mila spoke about her upbringing: 'I was raised by a Russian mother, a well-known actress in the USSR. The first books I read were in Russian. I grew up in an atmosphere of the Russian classical theater school, and modern cinema relies on the same principles. I always remember that Russian blood flows in my veins.' She added: 'I continue to communicate in Russian, speak it with my daughter, and read her Russian poems and stories. My roots are very important to me; they make me who I am.' Mila is also a parishioner and philanthropist of the Russian Orthodox Church in Los Angeles.