Early life
Phillips was born on April 1, 1980, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is the daughter of John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, Geneviève Waïte, a South African model, artist, and actress. She was named for the song "My Petite Bijou" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross (bijou means 'jewel' in French). She is the youngest of Phillips' children; she has one brother, Tamerlane, and three half-siblings (Mackenzie, Jeffrey, and Chynna). After her parents split up, both were found unfit to have custody of Bijou and she was placed in foster care with a family in Bolton Landing, New York. She lived there on and off, making extended visits with her parents, who had both acquired houses in the area. Her father won custody when she was in third grade, and she moved with him to Lloyd Harbor, a village of the Town of Huntington, Long Island.
According to Waïte, when Phillips was 13 years old, her half-sister Mackenzie informed Bijou of her (Mackenzie's) 10-year incestuous relationship with their father, and the information had a devastating effect on Bijou's teenage years, stripping her of her innocence and leaving her "wary of [her] father".
At 14, Phillips left school and moved into her own apartment with a housekeeper, just off Fifth Avenue. Once described by The Observer as a "wild child", she experienced a rebellious childhood in New York City, where she used to party, drink and take drugs, such as cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin. On this period of her life, she remarked: "If you were 14 years old and able to live on your own in an apartment in New York City, and you got invited to all these clubs, and you got a bank account and you had a car service you could call so that you could go wherever you wanted ... What would happen?" At 17, following the death of a friend, the 20-year-old Manhattan socialite Davide Sorrenti, her father sent her into rehab. Growing up, she became something of a local tabloids' fixture due to her late-night persona and association with other socialites like sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton. She claimed she lost her virginity to rock singer Evan Dando when she was 15 and he was about 27 or 28.
