Monica Anna Maria Bellucci was born on September 30, 1964, in Selci Lama, a small hamlet near Città di Castello, Umbria. Her father, Pasquale Bellucci, worked in a transport agency and was always travelling around, while her mother, Brunella Brigante, 19 years old at the time, stayed home and took care of their daughter. "I have happy memories," says the actress about her youth. As a child, Monica was very shy and not at ease playing with other children, probably because she didn't have any brother or sister.

Ever since she was a teenager, she was considered as "the beauty of the village" and everyone couldn't help but notice her when she walked with her friends in the streets of Città di Castello city center. Monica was always quite a good student, giving her best in literary subjects, and she graduated from Liceo Classico Plinio il Giovane. Then she immediately moved to Perugia to attend law school at university. She would have preferred studying philosophy, but she told herself that with a law degree it would be easier to find a job and settle down.

Modelling began as a way of paying her tuition and it occasionally brought her to Milan, the Italian mode capital. Soon this activity was stealing a major part of her time, so Monica decided to follow her independent soul and moved there in order to become a professional model, landing in a few months a contract with Elle Management agency and a cover on prestigious magazine Elle. "At 19 years old, spending eight hours a day on books seemed crazy to me, when I could do a gratifying and well-paid job as being a model," she declared. She also said: "It was my curiosity to discover the world [that made me leave Umbria]. I was like a little bird that leaves the nest when it feels ready." The catwalk gave her the opportunity to travel around the world and through it she met her first husband, photographer Claudio Carlos Basso, from whom she later separated and divorced. "There is nothing extraordinary in a marriage that comes an end. We remained very good friends and I admire him very much." Monica became an international top model. Dolce & Gabbana elected her as the icon of the Mediterranean woman for a series of advertisements and she was immortalized by Richard Avedon for Revlon campaign "Most Beautiful Women." But all this was not what Monica wanted for her life. She started dreaming about being an actress.

The occasion to fulfill the dream came thanks to the encounter with Enrico and Carlo Vanzina. Impressed by the intense expression in her eyes and by her breathtaking beauty, they introduced Monica to Dino Risi, one of greatest Italian directors. This way, in 1990 she got casted for her first role in Risi's tv film Vita Coi Figli. After starring alongside Giancarlo Giannini in her television debut and a small part in Briganti, she obtained two major roles in La Riffa and in Ostinato Destino. Critics didn't spare her harsh reviews, labelling her as yet another model turned actress. But Monica didn't give up. In 1992 Francis Ford Coppola personally chose her to play one of the vampire brides in his Dracula. It was Monica's first landing in Hollywood. In 1994, she starred in I Mitici by Carlo Vanzina, while 1995 saw her opposite to Ben Kingsley in Joseph, a Tv Rai/USA production by Robert Young.

Frustrated by the situation of movie industry in Italy, 1996 Monica moved to France, country that adopted her more than willingly. L'Appartement represented a huge turning point not only for her career, but also for her personal life. Her performance in the successful romantic drama by Gilles Mimouni was awarded with a nomination for a César, the French equivalent to the Oscar, and on set she met Vincent Cassel, with whom she fell deeply in love. Monica kept working incessantly both in Italy and in France, sharing screen with Vincent in several occasions: Dobermann (1997), Come Mi Vuoi (1997), Compromis (1998), Méditerranées (1999), to name a few. In 1999 they finally got married.

2000 was a fantastic year for Monica's career. She was casted to play the alluring and seducing wife of Gene Hackman in Under Suspicion, thriller made in Hollywood starring Morgan Freeman as well. Back in Italy, she took the leading role in Giuseppe Tornatore's latest movie, Malèna. Tornatore had already directed her in a series of commercials for D&G and had decided to base an entire drama on her astonishing figure. Malèna was a huge success, in Italy and abroad, where Monica was unanimously acclaimed and consacrated as one of the most promising international actresses.

In 2001 Le Pacte des Loups by Christophe Gans was released in France theaters, becoming immediately a cult movie. The same approval would greet it later in other European countries and in the United States, brining even more visibility to Monica. Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre, that came out a year later and in which she played an irresistible and capricious Queen of the Nile, was another unbelievable hit and France most profitable comedy ever. 2002's Cannes Film Festival received with mixed reactions Gaspar Noé's scandalous Irreversible, mostly because of the disturbingly realistic eight-minute rape scene, whose shootings constituted a real challenge for Monica.

In 2003, Italy got the chance to admire her in family drama Ricordati di Me by talented director Gabriele Muccino. Wachowski brothers watched Malèna during a plane flight and decided to audition and cast her as femme fatale Persephone in the final two chapters of Matrix trilogy, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, that along with war movie Tears of the Sun, opposite Bruce Willis, amounted to another great chance to get known in the US.

Although her agent strongly suggested her not to accept the part because of the lack of interested distributors, Monica appeared as Mary Magdalene in Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ. The film was a worldwide unexpected winner at 2004's box office. The couple Bellucci-Cassel started planning a child in their life and after finishing filming Agents Secretes, their last film together, and a few scenes for Spike Lee's She Hate Me, Monica realized her wish to be a mother giving life to her beautiful baby daughter Deva on September 12, 2004. She took a little time off from acting in movies and accorded with Vincent not to engage in common projects for a while in order to never leave Deva alone.

Monica was back on screens in 2005 with The Brothers Grimm by visionary Terry Gilliam, in which she played the wicked Mirror Queen, and with Combien Tu M'Aimes? by Bertrand Blier. The latter had her playing as a high-suburb prostitute with all men at her feet.