Hugh Hefner was born on April 9th, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois to Glenn and Grace Hefner. As a child, he attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High on the West Side of Chicago. While he didn’t earn the highest grades, Hefner possessed a genius IQ (152), individualizing himself instead with his extracurricular activities such as starting a school paper, writing, drawing animation, and serving as president of the student council.

Following graduation from high school in January 1944, Hef (a nickname that he's preferred since youth) joined the US Army, serving as an Infantry Clerk and drawing cartoons for various Army newspapers. After his discharge from the service in 1946, he began taking art classes at the Chicago Art Institute, enrolling that fall at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. Hef received his bachelor's degree in two and a half years by doubling up on classes while drawing cartoons for the Daily Illinois and editing the campus humor magazine Shaft, where he initially introduced a new feature entitled "Coed of the Month".

His first big job came as a promotion copywriter at Esquire magazine in 1951. Interestingly, Esquire had just stopped featuring sexual material in its pages, fearing it to controversial for the repressive fifties. When the magazine moved its offices to New York, he chose to remain behind and start a magazine of his own. The first issue of Playboy magazine, featuring the now-famous calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe, was produced on a kitchen table in his South Side apartment. Hitting newsstands in December 1953, it carried no cover date because Hefner was not sure when or if he would be able to produce another. But the first issue sold more than 50,000 copies -- enough to pay for the costs and finance another issue. Thus began the impressive life of Hef and his globally notorious magazine.

Hefner's devotion to the magazine in its early years precipitated the breakup of his marriage: Hefner and his wife Millie were separated in 1957 and divorced in 1959. As he and his wife became increasingly estranged, Hefner and his associates began to embody the life-style about which they wrote, having almost weekly parties at the Playboy editorial offices. When the success of the magazine came to the attention of the mainstream public, Hefner was happy to portray himself as the playboy his magazine described. For Hefner, his magazine and image were responses to the new mood of the country. He felt that the puritan ethic was eroding and that the pursuit of pleasure and material gain was the way of life for many Americans. As Hefner has been quoted, "If you had to sum up the idea of Playboy, it is anti-puritanism. Not just in regard to sex, but the whole range of play and pleasure." For many the Playboy philosophy proved to be a welcome antidote from the repressive atmosphere of the 1950s. Over the years it has continued to have its followers, and Hefner's small magazine for men has become an empire extending well beyond magazine publishing.

In the 1990s, the glamorous life-style at the Playboy Mansion began to change. After suffering a minor stroke in 1985, Hefner reevaluated his life and made several dramatic modifications to his life-style. In 1988, Hefner turned over the business operations of Playboy Enterprises to his daughter Christie, one of two children he had with his first wife. After a second marriage to a former Playmate of the Year, Kimberly, produced two sons, Marston and Cooper, Hefner continued to enjoy his new role as a husband and father. Hefner and Conrad separated in 1998.

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Recommended Reading
The Playboy Book. 40 Years by Gretchen Edgren
The Century of Sex. Playboy’s History of the Sexual Revolution by James Peterson