Barry Diller, 84, built one of the oddest and most durable careers in American business, starting in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency around 1960 after dropping out of UCLA three weeks into college. Forbes put his fortune at $5.3 billion in April 2026 and ranked him the 801st richest person in the world, a valuation that reflects how deeply his name is tied to media, television and the internet.
Diller founded IAC/InterActiveCorp in 1995 and turned it into a holding company shaped by acquisitions and mergers that included the Home Shopping Network. Today, IAC owns People Inc., Care.com and The Daily Beast, and also holds equity stakes in MGM Resorts International and Turo. Before that, he was chairman and chief executive officer of 20th Century Fox, and he and Rupert Murdoch launched the Fox network. He has also served as CEO, vice president, chairman or director of Expedia, The Coca-Cola Company, Tripadvisor, Live Nation Entertainment, Paramount and ABC.
That reach made him a mentor to a generation of executives sometimes called the Killer Dillers, including Dara Khosrowshahi, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg. But Diller’s own account of himself has often been less about boardrooms than about distance. In his 2015 memoir, Who Knew?, he wrote that the formality of his relationship with both parents still astounds him and said they never asked him a personal question, a detachment that shaped the private life of a man who spent decades in public view.
That private life is inseparable from Diane von Fürstenberg, the designer who first became romantically involved with Diller in 1974. Von Fürstenberg was married to Prince Egon von Fürstenberg from 1969 until 1983 and separated from him in 1972. She and Diller split in 1981, reunited in 1991 and married in 2001. Diller has said there has only ever been one woman in his life and that she did not come into it until he was 33 years old, adding that they have spent 50 years intertwined in a unique and complete love.
The pair’s partnership also left a mark on New York, where they spearheaded the renovation of the High Line and helped create Little Island. Diller now lives partly in the Meatpacking District, on a farm in Connecticut and in a palazzo in Italy. His brother Donald died in a police incident at 36 after becoming addicted to heroin and violently abusive, a reminder that the arc of his life has never been as polished as the profile of the billionaire who emerged from it.
