Hugh Hefner

1926 – 2017

Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher who founded Playboy in 1953 and built it into a media empire that turned the marketing of female nudity for male consumption into a mainstream product. Multiple former Playmates and live-in girlfriends, including Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, and Sondra Theodore, have since detailed coercive sexual practices, surveillance, drug use, and emotional abuse at the Playboy Mansion, with much of the testimony documented in the 2022 A&E series Secrets of Playboy. He died in 2017 at age 91 and was buried beside Marilyn Monroe at Westwood Memorial Park in a plot he purchased decades earlier.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM