Shantel VanSanten attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She began her career as a model when she was just 15; she got further exposure when she joined the NBC reality series Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Model Search, where she was eliminated on the very first episode.
VanSanten pursued an acting career in 2008, when she appeared in a few movies. In 2009, she starred in the horror flick The Final Destination; the same year, she joined the cast of the CW's One Tree Hill as Quinn James, the free-spirited sister of Bethany Joy Galeotti's Haley.