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Vanessa Lachey’s ethnicity, confirmed

What is the former Miss Teen USA and host of Love is Blind's ethnic heritage?

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Born on Nov. 9, 1980, in Angeles City, in the Republic of the Philippines, Vanessa Lachey is a 43-year-old television host, actress, model, and former teen beauty queen.

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Having been crowned 1998’s Miss Teen USA, Lachey has forged a screen career (as per IMDb) that has seen her present on television shows like Total Request Live, Love is Blind (alongside her husband, actor Nick Lachey), work as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, and act in series such as The Bold and the Beautiful, How I Met Your Mother, CSI: NY, Psych, 30 Rock, Hawaii Five-0, and NCIS: Hawaiʻi, in which she stars.

Lachey has also appeared in the movies Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) and Disaster Movie (2008) and appeared as a contestant on season 25 of Dancing with the Stars in 2017 when she was paired with professional dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy and finished 7th. Suffice it to say, she’s a successful woman.

She’s extremely beautiful with an exotic look, which has led to people asking what her ethnicity is. We can answer that.

What ethnicity is Vanessa Lachey?

According to Vanessa Lachey’s IMDb bio, her parents are Helen Bercero and Vince Minnillo. Helen is a Filipina, and Vince is a white American-born man from Ohio who’s of half Italian, one-quarter Russian-Jewish, and one-quarter Irish descent. The couple, who divorced in 1986, met when Vince was a crew member on an Air Force aircraft stationed in the Philippines.

So, while Lachey is an American citizen, she’s a mixed-race woman with rich, culturally diverse ancestry.

Some people incorrectly assume Lachey is an Indigenous Hawaiian due to her role as the Hawaiian-born lead character, Jane Tennant, in NCIS: Hawaiʻi. However, that’s not the case at all.