Patty spent the majority of her childhood moving frequently because her father was an Air Force captain. Due to this, she has lived in Thailand, Kansas and Germany. When Jenkins was seven, her father died during a NATO mock dogfight at the age of 31. Her mother then took her and her sister to San Francisco so that Jenkins could go to school to become an environmental scientist. There, Jenkins said in 2017, seeing the original "Superman" starring Christopher Reeve inspired her to pursue film as a career.