Belinda D'Alessandro was born in Brisbane, Australia to an Italian born father and an Australian born mother. Her father moved from Italy to Australia at the age of seven. Her maternal great-grandparents were from both Scotland and Ireland and she has extended family in Italy, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. D'Alessandro, the eldest of five children, grew up in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, and earned her law degree from Bond University in 1992. She worked in the legal profession for 15 years and moved to Sydney, Australia in 2000 to take a clerkship with a Federal Judge and moved into private practice and ran her own successful law firm for a number of years. As D'Alessandro started writing her debut crime novel, she also started her own boutique publishing company, BDA Books, at the end of 2007, which she ran at the same time her law firm until mid-2009. Then, a desire to focus exclusively on her writing led her leave her law firm behind and focus on BDA Books full time.