Jenifer Ringer was born in New Bern, North Carolina, and was raised in Summerville, South Carolina, where she began her dance training at age 10 with local teachers. At age 12 she entered the Washington School of Ballet, where she studied for two years. She attended SAB’s Summer Course at age 14, which led to an invitation to train full time in SAB’s Winter Term. She became an apprentice with New York City Ballet in October 1989 and a member of the corps de ballet in January 1990. She was promoted to soloist in January 1995 and to principal dancer in spring 2000. She retired from performing in February 2014. While still performing, Ms. Ringer served as Artistic Director of the New York State Summer School of the Arts in Saratoga Springs and was appointed a School of American Ballet teaching fellow from 2010-13.

In 2017, she co-founded the Colburn School’s Dance Academy with James Fayette in Los Angeles and served as Dean of Colburn’s Trudi Zipper Dance Institute until 2021. After relocating to her home state of South Carolina, she served on the faculty of the Dance Conservatory of Charleston in South Carolina from 2021-2024. Ms. Ringer joined the School of American Ballet’s artistic leadership team in August 2024 in the new role of Director of Intermediate/Advanced Divisions and Artistic Programming. Ms. Ringer was the recipient of both a Dance Magazine Award and the Jerome Robbins Award in 2011, and Dance Teacher magazine recognized her with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.