Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, but raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ester Dean was the youngest of five children raised by her single mother Hester, in a low-income household. At a young age Dean learned how to channel her pain into her music, writing and channeling her emotions into songs.

Creative writing served as Dean’s self-therapy, helping her cope with a hard life of poverty and bullying (inside and outside her home). Dean took to writing and singing as an escape from her small Oklahoma town with no glimpses of a positive future. At the age of 15, Dean and her sister Deandria moved to Omaha, Nebraska; leaving her older siblings in Tulsa.