Born Hema Hirani in Baroda, she met her future husband and fellow artist Chintan Upadhyay in 1992. The couple married in 1998, and settled in Mumbai. They worked together in many exhibitions, before filing for a divorce in 2010. They were officially divorced in 2014.^[1] Chintan then moved to Delhi; she lived in their flat on the Juhu-Tara road.