Rowell was born in Portland, Maine. Her biological mother, Dorothy Rowell, was White and a Mayflower descendant, and her birth father, whose surname was Wilson, was African-American. Rowell knew very little about her father. Dorothy, who suffered from schizophrenia, took a taxi to a hospital to give birth to Rowell, leaving a son and two small daughters unsupervised. When she was 16 days old, Rowell, Read more...

In the 1980s, Rowell became an in-demand runway and catalog model. She began to take acting lessons and earned featured roles on television shows such as The Cosby Show. In 1990, she was cast as street urchin-turned-fashion model Drucilla Barber on the long-running soap opera The Young and the Restless. Rowell became a fan favorite and was nominated for three Daytime Emmy awards in 1996, 1997 and Read more...

Rowell's first marriage was to Tom Fahey in 1989. They had a daughter, Maya, and divorced the following year. Rowell had a long-term relationship with musician Wynton Marsalis, and the couple had a son, Jasper (Jasper played Rowell's son CJ in Diagnosis: Murder). Rowell was born Protestant and later baptized in the Catholic religion.

In 1990, Rowell founded the "Rowell Foster Children Positive Read more...