Herrera is the scion of an old South American family. She "was hardly bred for this sort of business success," noted WWD writer Lorna Koski in 1991. "She was born, in fact, on another, much more languid planet, the lost world of the traditional Latin American aristocracy." Born Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Nino in Venezuela's capital city of Caracas on January 8, 1939, she was one of four daughters in a family whose roots on the continent stretched back to the 1500s. Her father, an aviation pioneer, served as governor of Caracas and was twice the country's foreign affairs minister. Herrera's mother and grandmother were chic women who regularly traveled to Paris to have their clothes made at the great design houses of Balenciaga and Lanvin.

Herrera's early life was a charmed one, with a governess on hand and luxurious surroundings. Still, her parents were strict with their children, as she recalled in the interview with Koski: "I had three sisters and I grew up in a very organized house, a very disciplined house. There was a right time for having breakfast, a right way of doing everything." Herrera sewed clothes for her dolls, but as she grew older became less interested in needlework; instead she became a skilled equestrienne and read avidly. "My mother believed you had to be cultivated," Herrera told Town & Country writer Annette Tapert in 1997. "Having an inner life was very important to her. She told her four daughters, 'Beauty is the first thing to go. If you don't have anything inside you, you are going to be so lonely.