Smith’s father was artist, Tony Smith and her mother was actress and opera singer, Jane Lawrence.[3] Although Kiki's work takes a very different form than that of her parents, early exposure to her father's process of making geometric sculptures allowed her to experience formal craftsmanship firsthand. Her childhood experience in the Catholic Church, combined with a fascination of the human body, has long shaped her work conceptually.[4]
Smith moved from Germany to South Orange, New Jersey as an infant in 1955. Subsequently attended Columbia High School.[1] Later, she was enrolled at Hartford Art School in Connecticut for eighteen months from 1974-75. She then moved to New York City in 1976 and joined Collaborative Projects (Colab), an artist collective. The influence of this radical group's use of unconventional materials can be in seen in her work.[5] For a short time in 1984, she studied to be an emergency medical technician and by 1990, she began to make fully realized figures.[1]