In 2012 he married his third wife, Crystal Harris, when he was 86 – 60 years older than his bride.
A libertarian by nature, Hefner’s Playboy Foundation continued to support freedom of expression and First Amendment rights. He also donated large sums of money to the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
He was a keen supporter of conservation organisations and, perhaps appropriately, had a species of rabbit, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, named in his honour.
In his later years Hugh Hefner was much ridiculed as the elderly man who still surrounded himself with beautiful young women.
But in Playboy he created a lifestyle which was in tune with the aspirations of a large section of post-war American society. The feminist Camille Paglia called him “one of the principal architects of the social revolution”.
“I am a kid in a candy store,” Hefner famously said. “I dreamed impossible dreams, and the dreams turned out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I’m the luckiest cat on the planet.”