As the Salutatorian of her class, on June 6, 1940, Bettie Page graduated from high school with a trust fund of $10,000 and enrolled at George Peabody College with the intention of becoming a teacher. However, the next fall Bettie Page began studying acting, hoping to become a movie star. At the same time, she began her first job, typing for author Alfred Leland Crab. Page graduated from Peabody with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1944. In 1943, she married Billy Neal (with whom she had attended high school) shortly before he left for active duty in World War II. For the next few years, Bettie moved from San Francisco to Nashville to Miami and to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where Bettie Page felt a special affinity with the country and its culture. In November 1947, while back in the United States, Bettie filed for divorce from Neal.

With Bettie Page commanding presence and sleek dark hair, she quickly became a highly sought-after pinup model. Though she never did scenes with overt sexuality, her pictures, often dark and somewhat menacing, held a very real appeal, and in an industry where the average pinup's career could be measured in weeks, Bettie Page was in high demand for several years. In 1955, Page posed for Playboy, a publication that, at that time, was only two years old. The move won her a great deal of fame and notoriety, some of it quite unwelcome.

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