Wynter was born as Dagmar Winter[REF] in Berlin, Germany,[REF][REF] the daughter of Dr. Peter Wynter (né Winter), a British surgeon, and his wife, Jutta (née Oarda), a native of Hungary.
Dana Wynter (as she called herself, pronounced as Donna) later enrolled at South Africa's Rhodes University (the only female student in a class of 150) and dabbled in theatre, playing the blind girl in a school production of Through a Glass Darkly, in which she claimed to be "terrible" [REF].