Kawashima Kiko dilahirkan di Shizuoka Prefecture, Jepun pada 11 September 1966. Dia tiada adik perempuan dan mempunyai abangnya iaitu Kawashima Tatsuhiko, professor di dalam bidang ekonomi di Universiti Gakushuin, dan isterinya, Kazuko. She spent her preschool days in the United States when her father taught at the University of Pennsylvania and attended junior high school in Vienna, Austria, when her father taught there. The future princess became fluent in English and German. She received her undergraduate degree from the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Letters of Gakushuin University in 1989. She subsequently began graduate study in psychology at Gakushuin and completed the first part of the doctorate in 1995.