Julie Leto was born and raised in Florida to a family of Italian and Cuban descent. After picking up her first romance when she was only sixteen, Leto knew that she wanted to write one of her own. She earned degrees in Creative Writing and Speech Communications from the University of South Florida. She began writing in 1988, while she was in graduate school. After graduation she became an English teacher at Tampa Catholic High School and continued to write on weekends and at night. In 1996, in order to give herself more time to write, Leto quit her teaching job and joined her family's manufacturing business. The following year she sold her fourth completed novel, Seducing Sullivan to Harlequin Temptation. Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a daughter and chose to be a full-time writer and mother.