Dina was born in London, shortly after midnight, on 15 August 1919, to the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (often informally referred to as "Jinnah"), and his second wife, Rattanbai Petit (whose name was legally amended to Maryam Jinnah after her marriage, though she did not use her new name). As Stanley Wolpert's "Jinnah of Pakistan" records: "Oddly enough, precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah's other offspring, Pakistan". Her premature arrival was unexpected — her parents were at the theatre, but "were obliged to leave their box hurriedly." She was reported to be "a dark-eyed beauty, lithe and winsome, with a smile like her mother's."