Kristina Pimenova, who was labelled ‘the most beautiful girl in the world’ at the age of nine, has since taken her life in a very different direction from the fashion career that first made her famous.
Now 20 and born in Moscow, Pimenova became internationally known as a child model, with her blonde hair and blue eyes helping her secure major work with some of the biggest brands in fashion before she reached her teenage years.
Rather than continuing down the modelling path, she is now focusing on acting and has reportedly enrolled in drama school as she works toward a career on stage and screen, the New York Post reports.
For someone whose early years were spent constantly in front of cameras, it marks a major shift. Her childhood fame also brought heavy public attention, much of it centred not on her, but on the way her image was shared online.
Pimenova started modelling when she was only three. By nine, she had already earned a reputation as one of the most striking child models in the world.
That visibility led to a string of high-profile campaigns, with Pimenova appearing in work linked to Vogue, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry and Monnalisa. In 2014, Women Daily magazine officially dubbed her “the most beautiful girl in the world” when she was just nine years old.
Yet the fame was accompanied by criticism.
Her mother, Glikeriya Pimenova, who had also worked as a model, faced accusations from some people online who claimed certain images of her daughter were inappropriate.
At the time, Glikeriya firmly rejected those claims and argued there was nothing improper about the photos.
“Some years ago, I posted a picture of little Kristina on the beach in the Maldives hugging her three soft toys and laughing,” she said in a 2014 interview with Mail Online.
She said critics had suggested her daughter was ‘covering her breasts because she thinks she has something to hide’, and dismissed those remarks as the result of ‘serious psychological problems’.
Glikeriya also said she did not choreograph her daughter’s poses and claimed she was seldom the one taking the photos.
“I do not accept those accusations about the sexualization of my child,” she said, adding that critics needed to ‘see a doctor’.
More than 10 years later, Pimenova has turned her attention to acting, including a part in a Russian stage version of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
She has also built screen credits in projects such as The Russian Bride, Secret Neighbor and Creators: The Past.
Between 2015 and 2021, Pimenova and her mother relocated to Los Angeles to pursue broader opportunities in both modeling and acting. However, the pandemic and a desire to reconnect with family led them to return to Russia, where she is now focused on developing her acting craft through drama school studies in Moscow.
Even with the controversy that followed her during her early years in the public eye, Pimenova has said the experience ultimately had a positive impact on her.
She said the backlash ‘gave me the determination to be anything I want’, and has described her rise to fame as something that happened almost by accident.
“It happened naturally. I was just playing around, it was like a game,” she explained.
“I didn’t even know what it was. It became a big part of my childhood, and it turned into making friends and travelling.”
Pimenova now has more than two million Instagram followers, where her bio says: ‘Remember beauty is inside.’