Griffith was raised in Bedford, New York, the daughter of actor/producer Peter Griffith and model/actress Nanita Greene. Her younger brother is Clay Griffith, who became a production designer and set decorator. She is the half-sister of Actress Melanie Griffith, daughter of their father's first wife. In the early 1970s, she moved with her family to Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Her parents separated in 1976. Griffith attended a boarding school in Maryland, graduating in 1979, and went on to spend two years at the University of Tennessee where she became interested in acting and dropped out in 1987.