Buffy Anne Summers was born in 1981 to the now divorced Hank and Joyce Summers. As a child, she would pretend to be a superhero - a prophetic choice of alter ego. She was very close to her cousin Celia until Celia died in a hospital ("Killed By Death" - 2.18), leading Buffy to hate hospitals. 

Buffy started at Hemery High School, Los Angeles, in Autumn 1995, and was elected May Queen the following summer, before learning of her calling from a Watcher named Merrick. Her initial forays into Slayerdom were somewhat less than successful, as Merrick was killed and she burned down the Hemery High gym. Her parents, who had been having marital difficulties for some time, also divorced at around this time, and Buffy and her mother moved to 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale, ("Angel" - 1.7) where Buffy enrolled as a sophomore at the local high school. Reluctantly at first, she took up her slaying duties again, taking Rupert Giles as her new Watcher ("The Harvest - 1.2").

Buffy's relationship-related success has been somewhat limited - her fifth grade crush at Hemery, Billy Fordham, didn't notice her feelings, although the two remained close friends ("Lie To Me" - 2.7). She briefly dated a guy called Tyler, but dumped him fairly quickly ("Becoming, Part 1" - 2.21). She also briefly dated two Sunnydale High students, Owen Thurman and Cameron Walker, but she discovered the former to be a danger junkie ("Never Kill A Boy On The First Date" - 1.5) and the latter was extremely dull, and also  a gill monster! ("Go Fish" - 2.20). Tom Warner, a college boy and Cordelia's date's friend, also came onto her ("Reptile Boy" - 2.5) but he was only interested in sacrificing her to the demon that his fraternity worshipped. She has also spurned Xander's numerous advances.

Her only successful relationship so far - with Angel, a vampire with a soul - has been very turbulent. The relationship seemed to be quite successful until it was consummated on Buffy's seventeenth birthday ("Surprise" - 2.13) which invoked Angel's curse, placed on him by the elders of a Romany tribe whose favourite daughter he had killed in the late 1800s - if he ever experienced true happiness, in this case making love with Buffy, his soul would be taken away from him and he would revert to his former self. This put something of a dampener on the relationship, and Angel, when his soul was restored by a spell discovered by Jenny Calendar and invoked by Willow, decided that they could no longer be together end left for Los Angeles when Buffy graduated from High School.

Buffy is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar.