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Irina Igorevna Antonenko
(born 1 September 1991) is a Russian actress, model and beauty queen
who helds the title of Miss Russia 2010. She also placed in the Top 15
at the Miss Universe 2010 pageant held on August 23, 2010 in Las Vegas,
Nevada.
Irina Antonenko was born on 1 September 1991 in
the city of Yekaterinburg located on the eastern side of the Ural
Mountains. Her parents, Natalia and Igor Antonenko, were both employees
of the police. She completed her high school education in school No.
156. According to the school director, Irina was "a very modest and
polite girl." Whilst studying at the school, Antonenko entered her first
beauty pageant, in which she failed to make the top three. After
finishing high school, she began to study finance at the Ural Finance
and Jurisprudence Institute, which was founded in 1992 by a group of
professors at the Ural State Law Academy. Around the same time, she also
started her modelling career. In 2009, she won the regional Miss
Yekaterinburg beauty contest.
On 6 March 2010,
Antonenko was crowned Miss Russia 2010 in a contest held in Moscow. The
crown was handed over to her by outgoing titleholder Sofia Rudieva. In
addition to the crown, she received a cash prize of $100,000, which she
plans to spend mostly on charity, to help children who are ill. The jury
concluded that there is more to Russia's new beauty than meets the eye,
and that she has the brains to match the looks.
After
her coronation as Miss Russia, she started modelling for the world
famous designer Philipp Plein, and also participated in fashion shows by
such designers as Olga Deffi, Alina Assi, Ilya Shiyan, Irina Natanova
and Vyacheslav Zaitsev, one of the most well-known Russian fashion
designers.