During her childhood, Ribon's family relocated many times due to her father's career in hotel management, spending time in several cities, including Danville, Pennsylvania; Williamsport, Pennsylvania; Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania; East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania; Bartonsville, Pennsylvania; York, Pennsylvania; Gaithersburg, Maryland; Troy, Michigan; Oakton, Virginia; Creve Coeur, Missouri, Palm Springs, California; Jackson, Mississippi; Eureka, Missouri; North Richland Hills, Texas, and Katy, Texas. It was there where Ribon's theatrical interest began, prompting her to seek a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ribon married another Television Without Pity flagship writer, Stee, in Los Angeles on December 31, 2004. The two divorced in 2009.

One of Ribon's claims to fame is her website, Pamie.com, a blog she has maintained since the 1990s. It attained a large readership, mostly because of Ribon's connection to the popular Television Without Pity site. In 2003, Ribon began using its popularity to promote library donation drives, a goal which in 2006 culminated in the Dewey Donation System, a permanent site devoted to publicizing library wish lists for interested donors.

In May 2003, Ribon read an article about the funding difficulties being experienced by the Oakland Public Library. When she found that they had resorted to putting up a wishlist on Amazon in order to get new materials, she wrote an entry asking her readers to do what they could to fill these needs. The success of this philanthropic gesture on the part of her readers led her to do the same for San Diego's public libraries the following year and for schoolchildren in India in 2005. In 2006, the Dewey Donation Drive began as its own permanent site, sponsoring libraries whose collections sustained damage during Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, the Dewey Donation System sponsored two libraries in need: The Rockhouse Foundation in Negril, Jamaica; and the Children's Institute in Los Angeles.