Early Life & Family
Leonard M. Greene was born in New York City on June 8, 1918. Max Greene, his chemist father, and Lyn Furman Greene, his artist mother, encouraged their son to create his own toys. His parents made him a gift of their old stove, which he could take apart. Greene experienced poverty as a youth during the Depression and never forgot it.
Greene first married Beverly Kaufman, with whom he had three children; this, however, ended in divorce. Then, he adopted four children of his second wife, Phyllis Saks Greene, with whom he had another child. Phyllis Saks Greene, an heiress of the Saks Fifth Avenue department store family, died in 1965. Greene’s third marriage was to Joyce Teck Meller in 1967, which also ended up in divorce in 2005.
A son from the second marriage, Donald Greene, died September 11, 2001, abroad United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania.
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