Jovovich was born on December 17, 1975, in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, (now Ukraine), the daughter of Bogdan Bogdanović Jovović, a Serbian pediatrician and Galina Loginova, a Soviet stage actress of ethnic Ukrainian-Russian descent.Jovovich's paternal family's estate was at Metohija in Zlopek near Peć. Her paternal great-grandfather, Bogić Camić Jovović, was a flag-bearer of the Serbian Vasojevići clan and an officer in the guard of the King Nicholas I of Montenegro; his wife's name was Milena. Her paternal grandfather, Bogdan Jovović, was a commander in the Priština military area, and later investigated finances in the military areas of Skopje and Sarajevo, where he uncovered massive gold embezzlement.
He was punished for refusing to convict a friend of the crime. Later, the government briefly imprisoned him in Goli Otok for refusing to testify. When he feared that he could be arrested again, he escaped to Albania and later moved to Kiev. A different version of the story claims that he was the one who took the gold. Bogich later joined Bodgan in Kiev, where he and his sister graduated in medicine. In 2000, her grandfather, Bogdan Jovović, died in Kiev.In 1981, when Jovovich was five years old, her family left the Soviet Union for political reasons and moved to London. They subsequently lived in Sacramento, California before settling in Los Angeles, California seven months later; Jovovich's parents divorced soon after.
In 1988, as a result of her father's relationship with an Argentinan woman, Jovovich's half-brother Marco Jovovich, was born. Jovovich's mother attempted to support the family with acting jobs, but found little success, and eventually resorted to cleaning houses to earn money. Both her father and mother provided house cleaning services for director Brian de Palma. Jovovich's father was incarcerated for most of her childhood for partaking in an illegal operation with medical insurance; he was given a 20-year sentence in 1994, but was released in 1999 after serving five years in an American prison. Jovovich has stated that "Prison was good for him. He's become a much better person. It gave him a chance to stop and think."
Jovovich attended public schools shortly after arriving in the United States, and learned fluent English in three months. During school, many of the students had teased her because she had immigrated from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Jovovich said, "I was called a Commie and a Russian spy. I was never, ever, ever accepted into the crowd". At age 12 in seventh grade, Jovovich left school to focus on her growing career. As a young teenager, she claimed to be rebellious, engaging in drug use, shopping mall vandalism, and credit-card fraud.