Dia Mirza Handrich nicknamed Dee and more popularly known as Dia Mirza, (born on December 9, 1981) is a former Indian model and actress who appears in Bollywood films. She was second runner up at Femina Miss India, 2000 and was subsequently sent to Miss Asia Pacific, 2000, where she won.
She completed the hat-trick of India winning international pageants in the year 2000 (Lara Dutta won the Miss Universe title and Priyanka Chopra won the Miss World title in the same year) when she won the Miss Asia Pacific title on 3 December 2000 in Manila, Philippines, also making her the first Indian contestant to win this title in 29 years.
Dia Mirza was born in Hyderabad, India. Her father, Frank Handrich, was a German graphic and industrial fair designer, architect, artist and interior designer from Munich and her mother, Deepa is a Bengali Indian who is an interior designer, landscaper and currently does social work as a volunteer to help alcoholics and addicts. They separated when she was six years old. Her father died when she was nine and her mother remarried Ahmed Mirza, who died in 2004. She retained a Muslim surname (Mirza). Later she adopted the last name of her birth-father and became Dia Mirza Handrich.
When living in Khairatabad, Hyderabad, she attended Vidyaranya High School for Boys And Girls, a school based on the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and later Nasr School, in Khairtabad. She completed her graduation in Bachelors of Arts from Open University, Hyderabad.
Mirza started working at the age of 16 years while continuing her college education. She worked as a marketing executive in a multi-media firm called Dr. Neeraj’s Multi media studio. She simultaneously modeled for the print and television advertisement campaigns of various brands such as Walls, Lipton, Emami etc. Mirza wanted to complete her graduation in Arts by correspondence, but decided to postpone it as it was becoming difficult to juggle between the Miss Asia Pacific competition, modeling assignments, traveling and training.
