Rollins was born Henry Lawrence Garfield in Washington, D.C., on February 13, 1961, the only child of Iris and Paul Garfield. Rollins' paternal great-grandfather, Henach Luban, fled to the U.S. from Rēzekne, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) and changed his first name to Henry. When Rollins was three years old, his parents divorced and he was raised by his mother in the Washington neighborhood of Glover Park. As a child and teenager, Rollins was sexually assaulted, and he suffered from depression and low self-esteem. In fourth grade, he was diagnosed with hyperactivity and took Ritalin for several years to focus during school. Rollins attended The Bullis School, then an all-male preparatory school in Potomac, Maryland.
According to Rollins, the school helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic.
After high school, he attended American University in Washington for one semester, but dropped out in December 1979. In 1987, he said that he had not seen his father since the age of 18, and, in 2019, wrote, 'What my father thinks of me, or if he is still alive, I have no idea.' Music career He began working minimum-wage jobs, including a job as a courier for kidney samples at the National Institutes of Health.
