Born in Perth, Western Australia

Melanie Perkins was born on 30 March 1987 in Perth, Western Australia. Her father, an engineer, was of Malaysian-Chinese and Sri Lankan descent, while her mother was a schoolteacher of Australian background. Growing up in a multicultural household in Perth gave Perkins an early appreciation for education and diverse perspectives, both of which would shape her later entrepreneurial vision.

As a child, Perkins was known for her curiosity and drive, learning to knit and sell scarves at a local market by age 14, an early sign of her entrepreneurial instincts. She attended Methodist Ladies' College in Perth before enrolling at the University of Western Australia (UWA), where she studied Communications, Psychology, and Commerce.

Her time at UWA proved formative: while teaching design software to university students as a side job, she recognized how needlessly complicated existing design tools were, particularly for beginners. This observation became the germinating idea for what would eventually become Canva, the graphic design platform she co-founded. Her birthplace and upbringing in Perth—far from the traditional technology hubs of Silicon Valley—later became part of her origin story as she built one of the most valuable startups to emerge from Australia, demonstrating that transformative technology companies could be built from anywhere in the world.