Debra Hill Chasnoff was born on October 12, 1957, in Philadelphia and was raised in a Maryland suburb of Washington. Her father, Joel, was a lawyer and a Maryland state legislator. Her mother, the former Selina Sue Prosen, was a psychologist. She earned a bachelor's in economics from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1978 and worked briefly as a rate analyst, with companies involved in nuclear weaponry among her clients. She and
Kim Klausner moved from Boston to San Francisco in 1985 and had two sons together. They later separated.