Samantha is a TV host and world traveler. Samantha Brown was born in Dallas, Texas and spent her formative years growing up in New Hampshire. Normal travel back then was loading up the family station wagon to visit relatives in Pennsylvania. Her biggest international trip was driving across the border once to Canada for a Quebec family vacation in junior high school. After falling in love with the performing arts in high school, Samantha decided to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in fine Arts from Syracuse University. The week after graduation, Samantha moved to New York City with her cat, to pursue her dream of being on the stage. Not surprisingly this lead to 8 years of waiting tables, auditioning and various roles in off to off off off Broadway productions.
In 1999, she landed a gig hosting Travel Channel’s Great Vacation Homes. She’s since also hosted Girl Meets Hawaii, Great Hotels, Passport to Europe, Passport to Latin America, Great Weekends, Green Getaways, Passport to China, and Samantha Brown’s Asia. Then, in January 2018, she began hosting and producing Samantha Brown’s Places to Love on PBS. The following year, the show won the Emmy for Outstanding Travel/Adventure Program and Brown won the Emmy for Outstanding Host. Samantha’s career as a television travel host happened by accident. A producer spotted her work in a commercial and recommended her to the Travel Channel in 1999 to audition for a new show being developed called “Great Vacation Homes”.
She calls herself an airport geek and enjoys her time spent in them (unlike everyone else in the world). Once in an airport, she loves to check the large departure board to see where other people are going. Even just seeing the names of exotic destinations like Istanbul, Casablanca and Jaipur make her want to travel more. In 2011, Samantha debuted her stylish line of luggage for HSN. The line quickly became a “customer pick” and went on to be one of the top brand launches for the year. Living out of a suitcase for over a decade, Samantha has enjoyed designing luggage as well as accessory cases, handbags and a packing system that bring ease and elegance back into travel.