The late editor-in-chief died at the age of 91 due to natural causes at his home, the Playboy mansion.
Playboy Enterprises on Wednesday confirmed the death of Hugh Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine. His men's magazine helped spur the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
However, in an interview to CNN in 2002, he said that he had never considered the publication as a sex magazine.
"I've never thought of Playboy quite frankly as a sex magazine," he said. "I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient."
The late editor-in-chief died at the age of 91 due to natural causes at his home, the Playboy mansion.
Hefner, left behind a legacy worth million dollars. According to the latest estimates, at the time of his death the iconic founder had an estimated net worth of about $50 million.
Millionaire in making:
Hefner started the magazine in 1953 with $600 loan against his furniture and investments from family members with a total of $8,000. The magazine instantly became the hot topic among news headlines because he published the nude picture of Marilyn Monroe.
And since then, Hefner never looked back, and built the magazine into a multimillion-dollar entertainment empire.
In 1970s, cashing on the magazine's success, he stepped in the business of TV shows, jazz festivals and a chain of Playboy Clubs whose cocktail waitresses wore bunny ears and cottontails.
The magazine's rabbit silhouette became one of the best known logos in the world and the "bunny" waitresses in his Playboy nightclubs were instantly recognizable in their low-cut bathing suit-style uniforms with bow ties, puffy cotton tails and pert rabbit ears.
The magazine in 1960s had already created a fan base by selling approximately 1 million magazines in a month. In the 1970s, the magazine earned $12 million in profits during its peak time. At its height, Hefner’s net worth was rumored to be around $200 million.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Hugh Hefner's net worth was $50 million at the time of his death.
His annual income was more than $4 million a year, half of which came from the magazine.
However, in 1985 Hefner suffered a stroke that left him temporarily partially paralyzed and unable to speak. He fully recovered but stepped down as CEO and turned over all the magazine’s business operations to his daughter, Christie.
But from his six acre Holmby Hills estate in Los Angeles, Hefner kept close tabs on the magazine.
Hefner's son, Cooper, who was nearly 40 years younger than Christie, assumed a major role in the company in 2014.
The downfall:
Playboy reached its peak in the mid 1970s. However, over the last 15 years, the magazine sales witnessed a steep downfall of approx 80% posing a threat to playboy empire.
According to data from the Publishers Information Bureau, the magazine sold 765 ad pages in 2000, and only 311 in 2009. That same year, the magazine reduced its circulation schedule to 11 issues a year.
In 2016, one of Hefner's neighbors, Daren Metroupoulos, a private equity investor and a son of billionaire C. Dean Metropoulos bought the Playboy mansion for $100 million with the understanding Hefner could stay there until he died.
The Playboy Enterprises agreed to pay $1 million a year to lease the property, according to a report published in the LA times.
The estate was initially listed for $200 million. It was acquired in 1971 for about $1.1 million.
Life that was a reason of every man's envy:
With so many ups and downs, one thing that was constant in Hugh Hefner's life was his luxurious lifestyle.
Before Playboy, Hefner married Millie Williams in 1949 and they divorced in 1959, starting a period in which he became the ultimate bachelor. In 1989 he married one of the Playmates of the Year Kimberly Conrad.
They had two sons but Hefner's experiment with traditional domesticity ended in divorce after 10 years. Conrad moved into a home next to Hefner so he could stay close to their sons.
In 2008 after one of his girlfriends, Holly Madison, broke up with Hefner, he said he had hoped to spend the rest of his life with her. Shortly afterward he added 19-year-old twins to his group before turning to marriage again with Harris.
Hefner once declared sex to be "the primary motivating factor in the course of human history" and, using that as a business model Playboy flourished during the sexual revolution and into the 1970s with monthly circulation hitting 7 million.
(with inputs from Agencies)
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