Melissa Dawn Howard was born in Tampa, Florida on February 12, 1977. She attended Brandon Senior High School and then University of South Florida, with a following at Mass Communications. She was cast on MTV's "The Real World: New Orleans", where later in the show she discovered her skill of painting. After the show she moved to Los Angeles where she began a career in stand-up comedy and realized it wasn't for her. She made a cameo on a made-for-MTV movie "The Real World Movie: The Lost Season"(2002) (TV), playing herself. Now she is living in West Hollywood. She has a blog (www.princessmelissa.com) in which she writes about living in LA, her job, her parents, and her experiences on The Real World.