Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Jada Pinkett Smith was named after her mother's favorite soap-opera actress, Jada Rowland. Pinkett Smith is of Jamaican and Bajan descent on her mother's side and African-American descent on her father's side. Her parents are Adrienne Banfield-Jones, the head nurse of an inner-city clinic in Baltimore, and Robsol Pinkett Jr., who ran a construction company. Banfield-Jones, who during the 2010s became Adrienne Banfield-Norris, became pregnant in high school; the couple married but divorced after several months. Banfield-Jones raised Pinkett with the help of her own mother, Marion Martin Banfield, a Jamaican-born social worker. Banfield noticed her granddaughter's passion for the performing arts and enrolled her in piano, tap dance, and ballet lessons.