Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Nena Birgitte Caroline von Schlebrügge (b. 1941), was a fashion model who was born in Mexico City, Mexico to German nobleman Friedrich Karl Johannes von Schlebrügge and Brigit Holmquist, who was from Stockholm, Sweden.

Thurman’s father, Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman, was born in New York City to Elizabeth Dean Farrar, a Scots-Irish American and a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr., (of English and Dutch descent) an Associated Press editor and U.N. translator. Thurman’s mother who was briefly married in 1964 to LSD guru Timothy Leary after the two were introduced by Salvador Dalí; she married Thurman’s father in 1967.

Thurman’s father, a recognized scholar and professor at Columbia University of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies, was the first westerner to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk.[citation needed] He gave his children a Buddhist upbringing: Uma is named after an Uma Chenpo (in Tibetan; Mahamadhyamaka in Sanskrit, meaning “Great Middle Way”). She has three brothers, Ganden (b. 1971), Dechen (b. 1973) and Mipam (b. 1978), and a half-sister named Taya (b. 1960) from her father’s previous marriage. She and her siblings spent extended amounts of time in Almora, India as children, and the Dalai Lama would sometimes visit their home.

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