Gabrielle Allyse Reece (born January 6, 1970) is an American professional volleyball player, sports announcer, fashion model and actress.
Reece was born in La Jolla, California, and raised in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
An only child of Terry Glynn and Robert Eduardo Reece.
Her father, who was Afro-Trinidadian, was killed in a plane crash when Gabrielle was five.
She returned to the U.S. mainland for the eleventh grade, attending Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg, Florida, when she took up sports.
She accepted a volleyball scholarship from Florida State University, where she majored in communications, and in volleyball she led the league in kills four times and blocks once.
Reece also set two school volleyball records, in solo blocks (240) and total blocks (747), both of which still stand.
In 1989, she moved to New York City to pursue more rigorously a parallel career as a sports fashion model and also continue in her pro volleyball career.
Florida State University inducted Reece into the Florida State University Athletics Hall of Fame in 1997.
On November 30, 1997, Reece married big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton.
They have two daughters: Reece Viola Hamilton (born in October 2003) and Brody Jo Hamilton (born on January 1, 2008, in Hawaii).
She and Hamilton also are raising Izabela, Hamilton’s daughter from his previous marriage to big wave surfer and clothing designer Maria Souza.
The Hamilton-Reece family splits time residing in Hawaii and Malibu, California.
