Danielle steel

Danielle Steel (born 1947) is an internationally best selling author of over thirty romance novels. Since publishing her first book in 1973, Steel has acquired an enormous following of loyal, avid reader.

Steel was born on August 14, 1947 in New York. Her parents were John Schulein Steel, a descendant of the founders of Lowenbrau beer and Norma da Câmara Stone Reis, the daughter of a Portuguese diplomat. Steel spent much of her early childhood in France where from an early age she was included in her parents' dinner parties, giving her an opportunity to observe the habits and lives of the wealthy and famous. Her parents divorced when she was seven, however, and she was raised primarily in New York by her father, rarely seeing her mother, who had moved to Europe. Steel started writing stories as a child, and by her late teens had begun writing poetry. A graduate of the Lycée Français de New York, class of 1965, she studied literature design and fashion design, first at Parsons School of Design in 1963 and then at New York University from 1963-1967.

In 1965, when she was only 18, Steel married banker Claude-Eric Lazard While a young wife, and still attending New York University, Steel began writing, completing her first manuscript the following year, when she was nineteen. After the birth of their daughter, Beatrix, in 1968, Steel became a copywriter for an advertising agency, then worked for a public relations agency in San Francisco. A client was highly impressed with her press releases and encouraged her to concentrate on writing books.

After nine years of marriage, Steel's relationship with Lazard ended. Shortly before their divorce was finalized her first novel, Going Home, was published. The novel contained many of the themes that her writing would become known for, including a focus on family issues and the impact of actions taken in the past on events of the present or future.

Steel married again, in a jailhouse ceremony with Danny Zugelder. The marriage ended quickly and Zugelder was later convicted of a series of rapes. Steel married her third husband, heroin-addicted William Toth, the day after her divorce from Zugelder was final, while she was 8 1/2 months pregnant with Toth's child. This marriage ended within two years, and Steel successfully petitioned to have Toth's parental rights to their son Nicholas terminated.

Still optimistic about finding love, Steel married for the fourth time in 1981, to vintner John Traina. Traina subsequently adopted Steel's son Nick and gave him his family name, and Steel adopted his two sons Trevor and Todd. Together they had an additional five children, Samantha, Victoria, Vanessa, Maxx and Zara.

Coincidentally, beginning with her marriage to Traina in 1981, Steel has been a near-permanent fixture on the New York Times hardcover and paperback bestsellers lists. In 1989, she was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having a book on the New York Times Bestseller List for the most consecutive weeks of any author – 381 consecutive weeks at that time.

Steel married for a fifth time, to Silicon Valley financier Tom Perkins, but the marriage lasted less than two years, ending in 1999.

After years of near-constant writing, Steel took a four-month break in 2003 to open an art gallery in San Francisco. The Steel Gallery of Contemporary Art exhibited the paintings and sculptures of emerging artists, especially those whose work Steel collects. The gallery subsequently closed June 4, 2006.

In 2006 Steel reached an agreement with Elizabeth Arden to launch a new perfume, Danielle by Danielle Steel. The new fragrance, made of mandarin, jasmine, orchid, rose, amber and musk scents, is available only in selected stores. The target audience for the fragrance is readers of Steel's novels, and she believes that the new scent reflects her characters, saying "Fragrances represent so many aspects of life that my characters experience – commitment, love, and emotion."

Steel lives in San Francisco, but also maintains a residence in France where she spends several months of each year and a beach house in La Californie near St. Tropez. Despite her public image and varied pursuits, Steel is known to be shy and because of that and her desire to protect her children from the tabloids, she rarely grants interviews or public appearances. Her San Francisco home was built in 1913 as the mansion of sugar tycoon Adolph B. Spreckels.