Simmons is of black, Korean, and Japanese heritage. In an article for Working Mother, she stated, "I was a loner growing up. I was a mixed-race girl with a Korean-Japanese mother and an African American father, and none of the other kids at my school were like me. I was nearly six feet tall by the time I was 11 years old. And I was an only child being raised by a single mother."
She then revealed, "They called me 'chinky giraffe.' I cried all the time. But my mother wanted me to turn my tears into something else, something positive." So her mother signed her up for modeling, where Simmons went on to help pave the way for mixed-race models and develop the confidence to showcase her distinct features, with Karl Lagerfeld eventually calling her "the face of the 21st century." Despite the challenges she faces in becoming a model, she remained resilient and persevering in her struggles and hard encounters.
References: https://www.buzzfeed.com/victoriavouloumanos/stars-who-are-mixed-asian-pacific-islander