Who is Hugh Hefner: biography of the Playboy founder and his legacy

Today, April 9, 2026, marks exactly 100 years since the birth of Hugh Marston Hefner— the American publisher who founded Playboy magazine and became one of the main symbols of the sexual revolution of the second half of the 20th century. Having died in 2017 at the age of 91, he left behind an ambiguous legacy: some consider him a fighter for freedom of speech and civil rights, others — the embodiment of the exploitation of women. All the details are in the Izvestia article.

The Early Years of Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner was born on April 9, 1926 in Chicago in the family of accountant Glenn Lucius Hefner and his wife Grace Caroline, who worked as a teacher. The family was conservative and Methodist, an environment strikingly at odds with what Hefner would create later. On his father's side, he was a descendant of Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford.

Since childhood, he gravitated towards creativity: he drew cartoons, founded the school newspaper and became president of the student council. After military service in 1944-1946, Hefner graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in psychology, and then worked in the advertising department of Esquire. When the management refused him a salary increase, he quit.

Founding of Playboy magazine

Hefner founded Playboy magazine in 1953 at the age of 27 with $8,000 borrowed from friends and $1,000 given by his mother. Initially, he planned to name the publication Stag Party ("Bachelor Party"), but a month before the publication, the existing Stag magazine claimed the rights to the name. There was an unexpected way out: at that time, a small company of Hefner's friend selling cars was operating under the Playboy brand, and he borrowed the name.

The first issue was published on December 1, 1953, without a date or serial number: Hefner doubted whether a second one would appear. Doubts dissipated quickly: the circulation exceeded 54 thousand copies. Marilyn Monroe was on the cover—she wasn't shot specifically for the publication; Hefner bought the rights to her photograph from the 1949 calendar for about $500. By 1960, the circulation reached one million, and in the 1970s, it peaked at 7 million copies.

According to Hefner, Playboy was supposed to be not just a magazine with explicit photographs, but a manifesto of refined, free urban life. His pages featured interviews with Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro, Andy Warhol and John Lennon.

On the inside page of the magazine, Hefner decided to publish a photo of a naked girl — the model was called Playmate ("playboy's girlfriend"). As a prize, the Playmate of the month received a fee of $25 thousand, and the Playmate of the year received $100 thousand, a car and a motorcycle. Over time, dozens of stars appeared on the magazine's covers: Pamela Anderson set a record with 14 cover appearances. In 1964, the March issue was dedicated to "the girls of Russia and the Iron Curtain" — the Bolshoi Ballet ballerinas Elena Matveeva, Elena and Krista Ryabinkin, the Latvian actress Eva Murniece and GUM workers starred for it.

Soon, Playboy stopped being just a magazine. In February 1960, the first Playboy Club opened in Chicago. The rabbit logo appeared in the second issue, designed by art director Art Paul.

Man as a Brand: How Hefner Turned himself into a Character

By this time, Hefner had already begun to transform himself into a brand: a silk robe, a pipe, a night schedule, a round bed, a private DC-9 Big Bunny — all this became a part of his character no less than the Playboy rabbit. Time called him a "prophet of pop hedonism," and Larry King a "giant in publishing, journalism, freedom of speech, and civil rights."

In 1971, Hefner opened the west branch of the mansion in Los Angeles and finally moved there in 1975. The Playboy Mansion became a symbol of the era — movie stars, politicians and athletes were invited here. In 2016, the mansion was sold to entrepreneur Daren Metropol for $100 million, with the condition that Hefner retains the right to live there for the rest of his life. In March 1985, after a mild stroke, he significantly reduced the scale of night parties, and his daughter Christie took over the operational management of Playboy Enterprises in 1988.

Playboy and the Civil Rights movement

Few associate Playboy with the civil rights movement, but The Daily Beast calls this aspect of Hefner's biography his "amazing legacy." In 1964, he founded the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation, an organization in support of freedom of speech and social justice; the foundation supported the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and funded key legal cases on freedom of speech, including the precedent case Miller v. California.

Comedian Dick Gregory said that in the early 1960s, no mainstream club allowed black artists to perform - Hefner was one of the first to invite him to Playboy Clubs. It was in Playboy that program interviews with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali were published — long before it became common practice. In 2010, Hefner donated $900,000 to preserve Kueng Peak, where the famous Hollywood inscription is located.

"My childhood dreams and fantasies came from movies, and the images created by Hollywood had a big impact on my life and on Playboy. Hollywood's landmark is its Eiffel Tower, and I am glad that I was able to help preserve this important cultural monument," he said in a commentary for the Associated Press.

The magazine's decline and scandals

NPR, in an article published after Hefner's death, stated that he "made history, but then stumbled over it": the feminist movement invariably criticized his empire for objectifying women. The case of Bill Cosby, who was convicted by a jury in 2022 of sexual assault on the grounds of the Playboy Mansion in 1975, reinforced these accusations.

The latest scandal broke out in February 2026. Hefner's widow, Crystal, along with attorney Gloria Olred, filed complaints with the attorney General's offices of California and Illinois, demanding an investigation into the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation. According to her, the foundation keeps about 3,000 personal scrapbooks containing thousands of candid photographs dating back to the 1960s. Some of the images, in her opinion, were obtained without the consent of the women, and some of them could have been minors at the time of shooting.

In addition to the albums, according to Olred's lawyer, the foundation has Hefner's personal diary with detailed notes about his intimate life, CNN reports. According to Crystal Hefner, she was removed from the post of president of the foundation immediately after she publicly expressed her concerns.

"This is not archival storage or history. This is control. I am seriously concerned that these materials may be publicly available," she said.

Hefner's sons Marston and Cooper denied the widow's accusations, telling The Hollywood Reporter that they had personally studied archival materials for many years and had not found any pictures of minors among them.

Hefner died on September 27, 2017 and is buried in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles next to Marilyn Monroe - he purchased a place at her grave back in the 1950s for $75 thousand. In 2020, Playboy discontinued the regular print edition; in 2024, the editorial board announced a return to print, and the first new issue was released in 2025.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.