The founder of Playboy magazine, Hugh Hefner, was found dead at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91.

“Hugh M. Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine and built the company into one of the most recognizable American global brands in history, peacefully passed away today from natural causes at his home, The Playboy Mansion, surrounded by loved ones,” a rep for the Playboy Enterprises founder said in a statement to PEOPLE.

Born on April 9, 1926, in Chicago, Hefner was a son to Methodist parents. “Part of the reason that I am who I am is my Puritan roots run deep,” he told the Associated Press in 2011. “My folks are Puritan. My folks are prohibitionists. There was no drinking in my home. No discussion of sex. And I think I saw the hurtful and hypocritical side of that from very early on,” he said in an interview. He also recalled in an interview with the Sunday Evening Post: “There was no drinking, no smoking, no swearing, no going to movies on Sunday. “Worst of all was their attitude toward sex, which they considered a horrid thing never to be mentioned.”

As a young adult, he attended Chicago Art Institute and graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Illinois. He had a double minor in creative writing and art in 1949. He then took graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University but never finished. Hefner was an Army Soldier in World War II. After graduating in 1944, he enlisted in the Army as an infantry clerk. During Basic Training, he won a sharpshooter badge for firing the M1. During his time at Camp Adair and Camp Pickett in Virginia, he created cartoons for the newspapers.

Later he started working as a copywriter for Esquire and left to start his journey into publishing. Hefner founded Playboy in 1953 and built the magazine into a multimillion-dollar empire. He was responsible for the Playboy Clubs where the waitresses were scantily dressed wearing bunny ears and white cottontails. His sheer marketing brilliance made him an icon that peaked in the 1970s and changed people’s views on sex. Personally, his legacy of dating hundreds of women and even marrying “Playmates” much younger was legendary to some and became a source of controversy. Hefner also co-produced videos and helped to fund Monty Python’s first film, “And Now for Something Completely Different.” He made appearances on shows like “Sex and the City,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Simpsons.”

Hefner has 4 kids and Cooper Hefner will continue to run the business. He said his dad lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and was a cultural pioneer. He was “A leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights, and sexual freedom,” he said. Some of the social movements Hefner supported was abortion. He helped fund the Rowe v. Wade decision and was an outspoken supporter of gay marriage. He was also outspoken about religion and believed it was ludicrous.

He was also outspoken about religion and believed it was ludicrous.

“It’s perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It’s something we have invented to explain the inexplicable… What does it all mean — if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn’t have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers because we have no such answers.”

Through the years men often joked that they read the magazine for its editorials. But John Steinbeck, Vance Packard, Roald Dahl and Ken Purdy, and Norman Mailer all contributed articles to the publication.

Marilyn Monroe, Farrah Fawcett, Madonna, Joan Collins, Lindsay Lohan, Pamela Anderson, Rachel Hunter, Daryl Hannah, Nicole “Coco” Austin, Sherilyn Fenn and Sharon Stone posed for Playboy.

“I’m living a grown-up version of a boy’s dream, turning life into a celebration,” he told Time magazine in 1967. “It’s all over too quickly. Life should be more than a vale of tears.”

Love him or hate him, Hefner left his imprint on our culture that will last forever.