Janet Wood Reno was born in Miami, Florida, to journalist parents Henry Olaf Reno and Jane Wood Reno.
Janet Wood Reno was born on July 21, 1938, in Miami, Florida, to Henry Olaf Reno, a police reporter for the Miami Herald, and Jane Wood Reno, an investigative journalist who also built the family home in the Everglades with her own hands.
Growing up in a household that valued independence, hard work, and civic engagement, Reno was raised amid the wetlands south of Miami, an environment that instilled in her a lifelong love of Florida's natural landscape and a fierce, self-reliant character. Her mother's unconventional career as a female journalist in a male-dominated field, and her willingness to challenge norms, served as an early model for Janet's own path-breaking career.
Reno's childhood in South Florida grounded her in the community she would later serve for decades as a prosecutor, and it shaped the plainspoken, unpretentious public persona she would carry into national office. She would go on to become the first woman to serve as U.S. Attorney General, a legacy rooted in the values and resilience she developed in this formative Florida upbringing.