In microvessels, periendothelial cells expressing alpha smooth muscle actin (αSMA) interact with the endothelial cells and are essential for vessel maturation and stabilization. In adult tissues, the cellular origin of the periendothelial cells is still not clear, in particular in humans. To determine the origin of human periendothelial cells, we used a recently-developed 3D co-culture system that mimics human skin connective tissue. This system is composed of normal human dermal fibroblasts (NHDF), human dermal microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC-1), and a collagen matrix. In this system, "microvessels" composed of an endothelial lumen with associated with periendothelial cells develop. Using this co-culture system, we (i) labelled fibroblasts with the vital dye CFDA-SE, cultured them with unlabeled endothelial cells, and observed that only endothelium-associated CFDA-SE-labelled cells express αSMA; (ii) infected endothelial cells with a retrovirus stably expressing eGFP, cultured them with unlabeled fibroblasts, and observed that cells expressing αSMA did not co-express eGFP, but were associated with the eGFP-expressing endothelial cells of the microvessels. Together, these results indicate that periendothelial cells arise by differentiation from fibroblasts and that they require interaction with endothelial cells to do so.