
Soon after, Juergen Teller photographed her for her debut ad campaign, Marc by Marc Jacobs, and she soon was photographed by Mario Testino and Paolo Roversi for British Vogue and David Sims for W Magazine.

Prinsloo debuted as a Prada /Miu Miu Exclusive. "We went to the grocery store after church and this guy came up to me and asked if I was a model and wrote his number on a piece of paper.". Her modeling career began when she was discovered while vacationing in Cape Town with her grandparents. She attended Grootfontein Secondary School and left after Grade 9 to pursue modelling. Her family are Afrikaners and she grew up speaking Afrikaans as her native language she was educated in English.

Her mother, Magda (née Rossouw), runs a bed and breakfast. She is the only child of father Boet Prinsloo, who is a church minister. Her father was contracted to work in South Africa before she was born, but when she was three years old her family moved back to Namibia.

Prinsloo was born in Grootfontein, Namibia, then part of South West Africa.
