Aria Giovanni (born Cindy Renee Volk, November 3, 1977) is a nude model and actress who was Penthouse Pet for the month of September 2000.
Giovanni was born in Long Beach, California; her father was Italian-Yugoslavian, her mother French-German-Irish-West Indian. About her early life, Aria has recounted she was quite shy, with only one friend in high school, but that she did very well in her classes. According to her website, she did so well that she was able to graduate and head to college by the age of 16. Part of the reason for that was that she entered rehab at age 12 for drug and alcohol problems and stayed there for 26 months. During her second year in rehab she was able start taking high school classes and was able to take two years worth of classes during that time. When she did leave to go to a regular high school, it was for her junior year.
She attended a junior college in San Diego majoring in biology, while waitressing and tutoring in science and mathematics on the side, when she decided to enter modeling. She started answering newspaper ads in October, 1999, and soon began appearing on various amateur pornography websites such as Amateur Pink, Busty Amateurs, Seductive Amateurs, and BubbleGirls.
In 2000, Aimee Sweet introduced Giovanni to glamour photographer Suze Randall, who in late May of that year shot photos of Giovanni which appeared in the September issue of Penthouse magazine. At the same time, she also appeared on the web site Bomis, posing clothed for a Ferrari giveaway contest.
Around the same time that she shot the Penthouse photos, she transferred to University of California, San Diego as a junior transfer student intending to major in biochemistry and minor in English writing. However, she opted not to attend as she felt that the workload would not leave time for modelling; "I knew I could always come back to school, but I probably couldn't come back to modeling."
She has married and divorced the rock guitarist John 5.
