Ayanna was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but moved to Vermont at an early age.
She had a troubled childhood, spending sixteen years in foster homes after her mother, Emma, was judged to be mentally unfit to look after her children.
Her first acting credit, after changing her name to Charlotte Ayanna, was her appearance in an October 1998 episode of Profiler.
Her film roles include: a brief appearance as a fatality in Jawbreaker (1999); The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999); a stripper in Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000); Love the Hard Way (2003) with Adrien Brody; and a sexy vampiress in the horror direct-to-video movie The Insatiable (2007).
After her pageant career ended and her book had been published, she chose to change her surname from Lopez to Ayanna, which she states means "blessed" in Cherokee.