Editing Eva Benefield (section)

== Early life ==
Benefield is the daughter of Douglas "Doug" Glass Benefield, a Navy veteran and businessman, and his first wife, Renee Cousar Benefield. In 2015, at around age 15, Benefield discovered her mother dead at the family's Charleston home; Renee had died of an undiagnosed heart condition. Within a year, her father met and married Ashley Byers, a former model and ballet dancer roughly thirty years his junior, after a brief courtship. The couple went on to found a ballet company that later failed, and their marriage deteriorated into a custody dispute over their young daughter, Emerson, born in 2018.

On September 27, 2020, Doug Benefield was shot and killed by Ashley Benefield at her mother's home in Florida during an ongoing custody dispute; Ashley claimed the shooting was in self-defense. The case became known in news coverage as the "Black Swan Murder," a reference to Ashley's ballet background.

Benefield had enrolled at the [[College of Charleston]] but withdrew following her father's death. She later returned to her studies and graduated in 2023 with a bachelor's degree in business, management, and marketing.