Dina was born in London, Earth, on February 22 1925. Her father and mother were Dr. and Mrs. Coventry. Dr. Coventry was a surgeon in the Great War. He helped form The Hermetic Scholars of Osybus, an organization of several families that studied occultism in No. 5 Gloucester Gate, the home of the Durst family. The Scholars were comprised of seven families, each of which had children living in the house, of whom Dina was the smallest. The other children were Evelyn and Charlotte Webb, Leon Payne, Glenn Walker, Katla Hughes, Melvin Below, and Rose and Thorn Durst.
The children, including Dina, were locked in the attic when the cult performed its' rituals in the tunnels that Mr. Durst (Founder of the cult.) dug beneath the house. The older children, mostly Leon and Glenn, suspected some of what the cult was doing, but most of the children believed what they were told, that their parents were battling some kind of monster in the basement.
On December 12, 1931, while their children were in the attic, the Scholars did something in the basement which caused the house to be shrouded in mist. When the mists receded, the house left with them, transported to the country of Barovia, in the Shadowfell. Without food or water in the attic, the children sought a way to escape. With Leon's help, Dina was able to escape to the lower floors of the house through a chimney. She searched the house for days, but was unable to find the keys, a way to break down the attic door, or any of their parents. Eventually the Scholars emerged from their basement, seemingly not in their right minds, and Dina wisely fled the house.
Dina began surviving in the swampland of Berez, only occasionally returning to the vicinity of the Durst house. On one such occasion when she was still quite young, Dina was briefly reinducted into the society. They ritualistically tattooed her arms with magical ink, as was becoming one of their new practices, though she escaped once again using her recently manifested psionic abilities. Dina also witnessed one of the Scholars, Ms. Hughes, escape with her infant siblings, Isaac and Irene Coventry, shortly before the arrival of Strahd Von Zarovich
She spent the next 18 years in the swamp, seldom catching sight of the house again, but always keeping an eye out. She was often antagonized by the witch Baba Lysaga, under whose power the landscape shifted in and out of different times and places. Eventually, at age 24, she found her way back to the house for the first time in years by quietly following Dragomir, Nomi, The Bird, Cherish, and Torben, all of whom were strangers to her.