She joined Playboy in 1975 and worked in a variety of the Company's businesses before being named president in 1982. In 1988, she was elected to her present position of Chairman and CEO with the New York Stock Exchange-listed international media and entertainment company.

During her tenure, Hefner has restructured operations and initiated the Company's highly successful electronic and international expansion. Through licensees, the Company offers a wide range of Playboy-branded apparel and lifestyle products in more than 100 countries. She also extended Playboy's influence worldwide by forming alliances with international partners that now produce and distribute 18 foreign editions of Playboy magazine, from Taiwan to Russia.

Under Hefner's direction, the Company has significantly expanded its television business from the launch of its branded channel in 1982, which made Playboy the first magazine brand to be successfully leveraged into television. Today, the Company's channels are available in approximately 130 million U.S. cable and DTH household units and its programming reaches more than 70 countries throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Continuing the Company's electronic expansion, Hefner in 1994 led the Company onto the Internet when Playboy became the first national magazine on the World Wide Web. Playboy.com--which is made up of original content as well as repurposed content from the magazine and television--is a multiple revenue business with subscription sites, e-commerce, advertising and online gaming. It has since grown into one of the most popular online destinations for men and is the Company's fastest-growing profit center.

Besides directing Playboy Enterprises' operations, Hefner is active in a number of local and national organizations. She was the first woman elected to the Chicago chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization. Hefner helped found the Committee of 200, an international organization of preeminent women business owners and executives. She serves on the boards of the Magazine Publishers Association, the Business Committee for the Arts, Canyon Ranch Health Resort, The Committee of 200 Foundation, and on the board of governors of the Museum of Television & Radio Media Center. Hefner is also on the Advisory Boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and The Creative Coalition, and a member of The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's Diversity Committee. She also spent four years as project board chairman for the CORE Center, raising $30 million to build this innovative clinic and research facility, which opened in Chicago in the summer of 1998. The CORE Center conducts clinical research and provides prevention education and outpatient care for people with HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases.

As the first woman to receive the Executive Leadership Award from the National Society of Fundraising Executives, Hefner has been honored with a Humanitarian Award from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Spirit of Life Award from the City of Hope and the Corporate Leadership Award from the AIDS Pastoral Care Network. She also has been recognized by the International Platform Association, an organization involved in the promotion of ideas and opinions through public forums, which presented her with the 1990 Eleanor Roosevelt Award, for her commitment to human rights and civil liberties in the tradition of the former first lady and long-time IPA member. She was inducted into the Women's Business Development Center Hall of Fame in 1991, for opening doors and building opportunities for all women entrepreneurs. In 2002, she received the Committee of 200"s Philanthropic Innovator Luminary Award and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association"s Vanguard Award for Distinguished Leadership, the cable industry's highest honor, for her longstanding commitment to the First Amendment rights of cable programmers and operators and for her strong advocacy of workplace diversity. In 2003, she received the University of Illinois at Chicago's Family Business Council's Leadership Award, bearing an inscription recognizing her "vision, determination and courage in refocusing, diversifying and ultimately ensuring the future of an American icon, leading Playboy into the new millennium."

Hefner was born in Chicago in 1952. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year of college, Hefner graduated from Brandeis University summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American literature in 1974. She became a President's Councilor of her alma mater in 1978. She is married to real estate developer and attorney William A. Marovitz, a former Illinois state senator.