Model Ai Tominaga was born on August 1, 1982, in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Since childhood, she has had a complex about her height, and in an effort to overcome this, she applied to be a reader model. She was selected as a model for the fashion magazine Petit Seven while in junior high. Upon entering high school, she joined a modeling agency and made her runway debut at Hiromichi Nakano's Tokyo Collection in 1999. The following year, a photo of her in her school uniform was published in Vogue Nippon. After graduating from high school, she devoted herself to modeling, and in the spring of 2001, she traveled to the United States to appear at the New York Collection. She was selected to walk in shows for Anna Sui and Ralph Lauren, and her name quickly became known around the world. She was also featured as a model for Dior and Valentino at the Paris Collection in July. In September, she returned to New York and appeared in a collection, winning the Fashion Editors' Award. Tominaga continued to appear in collections held in New York, Milan, and Paris. In 2002, she became the first Asian model to appear in Saint Laurent's world campaign, and has since appeared in numerous advertisements. For the 2010-2011 Autumn/Winter season, she appeared in the Givenchy show at the designer's personal request. In March 2010, she announced her retirement from collection modeling. Her final appearance overseas was Louis Vuitton's 2011 Spring/Summer collection, held in the fall of 2010. Since then, she has relocated to Japan, where she has been active in a wide range of fields, including modeling, television, and radio. She is also actively involved in social contribution activities, serving as an official supporter of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and an ambassador for the international cooperation NGO, Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP). In her private life, she married in 2004 and had a son, but divorced in 2009. In 2012, she became the subject of much discussion after reports of her cheating with actor Shioya Shun were published.