Hugh Hefner was the American magazine publisher who founded Playboy and, through it, became one of the most recognizable symbols of the so-called sexual revolution and a controversial arbiter of modern lifestyle and morality. Born in Chicago to a strict Methodist family, he worked as a copywriter and magazine promoter before staking everything on a new publication aimed at urban men.
In 1953, with a modest investment, Hefner launched Playboy, whose first issue featured a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The magazine was an immediate sensation, combining glamorous photography with serious fiction, journalism, and interviews. Hefner promoted a sophisticated, pleasure-seeking image of bachelor life, and the magazine's rabbit-head logo became one of the most famous brand symbols in the world.
Playboy made Hefner enormously wealthy and turned him into a celebrity in his own right. He cultivated a flamboyant persona — lounging in silk pajamas at the Playboy Mansion, surrounded by young women — and built an empire of clubs, resorts, and media ventures around the brand.
Hefner cast himself as a champion of free expression and personal liberation, and Playboy did publish notable writing and took stands on civil rights and censorship. To his many critics, however, he was a purveyor of the commercial objectification of women, and his legacy remained fiercely contested. He continued to preside over his empire into extreme old age, an enduring and divisive figure of American popular culture, until his death in 2017.