Background
Her name means 'precious stone' in Italian.
She grew up on the beach. "It was such a luxury to wake up to the sun and the ocean."
Gemma wanted to be a actress when she was younger. "I wanted to be like an actor or a comedian for a little while, because I was always wanting to make people laugh, and being stupid, so I never thought I'd be doing a job where you always have to look nice, and polished and sophisticated. " She says her everyday look is a bit more scruffy than the clothes she models. "I never really cared about what I looked like."
She shared an apartment with her best friend in New York City. Before she found an apartment she even slept on her friend's couch.
"I came to watch my friends. I was sitting there in the crowd when the agent from Perth came over. I didn't even want to enter, it was a bit of chance. I was so shocked when I got my first job."
Her height is 5' 9" (1.75 m).
"Some girls get swept up in the lifestyle-clubbing and partying with celebrities. You can't live your life like that, though. It's fake."
Education
She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College and Shenton College.
Career
Gemma Ward started her model career in the year 2002.
When she was 15 years old, she was discovered in the audience of "Search for a Supermodel" (fashion editor) to be feature in the "It Girls" of the supermodel world.
In September 2004 at only sixteen, Ward became the youngest model to appear on American Vogue photographed by Steven Meisel as one of the nine "Models of the Moment" with Daria Werbowy, Natalia Vodianova, Gisele Bündchen, Isabeli Fontana, Karolina Kurkova, Liya Kebede, Hana Soukupova and Karen Elson.
In February 2005, Ward appeared in no less than 20 New York runways for designers that included Vera Wang, Oscar de la Renta and Klein, and was rumored to earn about $20,000 per show.
At 17, she became the famous face of Calvin Klein’s Obsession Night perfume billboards – bumping Kate Moss out of a job in the process.
Ward was reportedly paid $1.3 million for the Calvin Klein campaign and counted similar deals with Burberry and Valentino among her model earnings.
In September 2005, Ward secured a coveted place on the inaugural cover of Vogue China posing between Chinese models Du Juan and Wang Wenqin and was shot by leading photographer Patrick Demarchelier.
By 2006 Ward became Australia's brightest fashion star since Elle Macpherson.
At the age of 18, Ward became the first model ever to appear on the cover of Teen Vogue magazine.
In July 2007, earning at an estimated total of $3 million in the past 12 months, Forbes named her tenth in the list of the World's 15 Top-Earning Supermodels.