Branch holds dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and the United States. She also speaks some French and Mandarin Chinese.[1]
After graduating from Mercersburg Academy, a boarding school in south-central Pennsylvania, she graduated from Middlebury College in 1994. She won the crown as Miss Vermont 1994 and competed in the Miss America 1995 pageant. In 1996, she began tutoring two young girls, Blair and Ana Van Pelt, in French, and later moved in with the Van Pelt family in Newport Beach, Califo