Hugh Hefner, Playboy founder who built a global brand on sex and free sp...

Hugh Hefner, Playboy founder who built a global brand on sex and free speech, dies at 91

Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, has died from natural causes at the age of 91. 

He died peacefully at home surrounded by his family, Playboy Enterprises said in a statement.

The magazine was first published in 1953 and, with its iconic mix of nudes, in-depth interviews and fiction, Hefner is credited with building a brand that helped shape the sexual culture of the second half of the 20th century. At that time, contraception was banned in some US states and TV shows balked from using the word "pregnant" in prime time. The first issue featured naked photos of Marilyn Monroe and came with an editorial promise of "humour, sophistication and spice."

It was a breath of fresh air after years of gloom starting with The Great Depression and lasting through World War II.

• Hugh Hefner: A career in pictures

Hefner took on the establishment as a champion of free speech - battling censorship and the US Postal Service that wanted to deny him from sending the magazine in the second class mail - and civil rights but was also dismissed as little more than a purveyor of smut.  

Cooper Hefner, his son, said he would be deeply missed.

"My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom," he said.

"He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognisable and enduring in history."

All the while he was building a publishing empire and a global brand.

Playboy's buxom models were the objects of millions of men's fantasies as Hefner challenged what he derided as America's "Puritanical" attitudes toward sex. 

The magazine reached a readership of seven million at its height in the 1970s and spawned raunchier rivals such as Hustler and Penthouse.

For decades, Hefner remained the pipe-smoking, captain's hat wearing, silk-pajama-clad centre of a non-stop party at the Playboy mansions in Chicago and later in Los Angeles. 

He claimed to have had sex with more than 1000 women, many of them models who appeared in his magazine.

But in a 2009 interview with The Telegraph, he insisted his aim was simply to bring sex out of the shadows into a healthier place in society.

“Playboy was not a sex magazine, as far as I was concerned. Sex was simply part of the total package; I was trying to bring sex into the fold of a healthy lifestyle," he said. 

"When Penthouse and Hustler came along they confused what I was trying to do. Before they arrived, we were perceived as a sophisticated men’s magazine.”