Christie Hefner

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Biographical Information

In 2009 Ms. Hefner retired as chief executive of Playboy Enterprises after 20 years. Former editor of the liberal Nation, Victor S. Navasky says: “She’s certainly a liberal feminist and a liberal Democrat”; adding that “People would say, ‘so what’s she doing putting out a magazine and running clubs catering to horny men?’ But she found a way to make it work consistent with her values, to serve Playboy and her father and give them an opportunity to do socially useful things.”

"While Hef poses with Playmates a quarter his age, Ms. Hefner is a legendary networker who called Warren E. Buffett when she recapitalized the company...

"After graduating summa cum laude from Brandeis, she planned to go to law school, when her father suggested she first get some work experience at Playboy.

"She stayed 33 years, building a profitable Internet operation and creating a $1 billion brand licensing division that is the company’s biggest profit maker. While Hef bragged about not crossing the line into hard porn, she did, buying Spice TV and Club Jenna and defending the move as business....

"She campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment and gay rights and was chairwoman of a drive that raised $30 million for an AIDS treatment and research clinic in Chicago. Gloria Steinem, who made sport of attacking Hef (“a woman reading Playboy,” she once said, “feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual”) brought Ms. Hefner onto the board of Voters for Choice.

"Ms. Hefner lives in Chicago and is heavily involved in politics. She has donated $201,000 to Democrats and liberal causes over the last 30 years, according to federal data collected by the NewsMeat Web site...

"For 25 years she was on the board of the Magazine Publishers of America, and in 2005 arranged for one networking friend, Barack Obama, to speak at its annual conference..." [1]

• Advisory Board, Creative Coalition

Her father is Hugh Hefner.