Feinstein was born Dianne Emiel Goldman in San Francisco to Leon Goldman, a surgeon, and his wife Betty (née Rosenburg), a former model. Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her maternal grandparents, the Rosenburgs, were from Saint Petersburg, Russia. While they were of German-Jewish ancestry, they practiced the Russian Orthodox (Christian) faith, as was required for Jews in Saint Petersburg. Christianity was passed down to Feinstein's mother, who insisted on her transferral from a Jewish day school to a prestigious local Catholic school, but Feinstein lists her religion as Judaism. She graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in 1951 and from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in history.