American financier Stephen Schwarzman has an estimated net worth of $16.7 billion in July 2019. He is #182 in the World Billionaires List, #184 in 2012, #57 in the United States, and # 63 in the Forbes 400 List according to Forbes.com. Born Stephen Allen Schwarzman on February 14, 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he attended Yale University in the same period with George W. Bush who was a year ahead of him. He graduated in 1969, and then went to Harvard Business School where he earned his MBA in 1972.

After graduate school, Schwarzman worked for Lehman Brothers and became a managing director then the head of Global Acquisitions and Mergers. He left the firm and in 1985, he and his boss Peter Peterson started Blackstone which started focusing on mergers and acquisitions. It went public in 2007. Peterson retired in 2008 and Schwarzman announced a donation of $100 million to the New York Public Library. Its main branch on Fifth Avenue was soon named after him. Currently, he is the sole owner and CEO of the company which manages around $190 billion in assets in various companies. In 2011, the value of the company has increased by 15%. By the end of 2012, its asset under management is already $210 billion. As a philanthropist, he pays for the education of more than a hundred less fortunate children in New York City along with his wife. He was the one who received all their report cards and personally wrote notes on them all every semester.