Erika Jayne

Erika Chahoy was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and was raised by her mother, Renee Chahoy. Her father left when she was nine months old. She attended North Atlanta High School for the Performing Arts and moved to New York City at 18.

After living in New York, she moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s to pursue a career as a singer. She later adopted the professional name Erika Jayne, a name that music producer Peter Rafelson suggested.

Jayne began her professional singing career with the 2007 single "Roller Coaster," which reached number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. Her subsequent dance-pop singles included "Stars," "Give You Everything," "Pretty Mess," "One Hot Pleasure," "Party People (Ignite the World)," "Painkillr," "Crazy," and "How Many Fucks," giving her a series of number-one dance club hits. Her debut studio album, Pretty Mess, was released in 2009.

Her collaborations included the 2013 single "Get It Tonight," featuring Flo Rida, and the 2019 track "Drip," on which she was featured by Brooke Candy. Jayne performed at gay nightclubs and LGBT pride events, including LA Pride, and launched her first headlining concert tour, Erika Jayne Presents: The Pretty Mess Tour, in 2018.

In 2023, she presented the Bet It All on Blonde residency at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The residency was the focus of the two-part documentary Erika Jayne: Bet It All on Blonde, which Bravo aired in 2024.

Jayne's earliest screen appearances were uncredited roles in the first season of NBC's Law & Order, including Suzanne Morton in the pilot episode "Prescription for Death." She also appeared in the independent films Alchemy and Lowball, and later played Tech Frances in Sharknado: The 4th Awakens.

She joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in 2015 for its sixth season. The series became her most prominent television role and established her as a reality television personality. She also appeared with Eileen Davidson on The Young and the Restless, playing real estate agent Farrah Dubose in episodes broadcast from 2016 through 2018.

In 2017, Jayne competed on season 24 of Dancing with the Stars with professional partner Gleb Savchenko. The pair placed ninth and were eliminated in week five. She later competed against Taye Diggs on Lip Sync Battle, hosted the red carpet for the American Music Awards, and co-hosted the pre-show for the Billboard Music Awards.

Jayne made her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago in January 2020. Her scheduled engagement was interrupted by the COVID-19 shutdown, and she returned to the role at the Ambassador Theatre in January 2025. She also competed as Yorkie on season 13 of The Masked Singer.

While living in New York, Jayne met DJ Thomas Zizzo. They married in 1991 and had a son, Thomas Zizzo Jr., before divorcing in 1996. Her son is a police officer in Los Angeles.

Jayne met attorney Thomas Girardi while working as a cocktail waitress at a Los Angeles restaurant. They married in 2000, and she announced their separation in 2020 before filing for divorce. Girardi was later convicted of four counts of wire fraud and sentenced to 87 months in prison.

Jayne and Girardi were named in lawsuits involving funds intended for families of the victims of the 2018 Lion Air plane crash. Their legal troubles were examined in the documentaries The Housewife and the Hustler and The Housewife and the Hustler 2: The Reckoning. In 2022, a judge ruled in a civil fraud lawsuit that the plaintiffs had not proved Jayne knew about or participated in the alleged fraud.