Dianne Feinstein

Dianne Feinstein has been married thrice. In 1956, she married Jack Berman, who was her colleague in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. They divorced in 1959. Their daughter, Katherine Feinstein Mariano, was born in 1957. Katherine was the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court from 2000 to 2012.

In 1962, Feinstein married neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, who died of colon cancer in 1978. In 1980, she married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker.

She has been accused of misusing her office to grant her husband’s companies billions of dollars in military contracts. She was also criticized for her husband’s extensive business dealings with China. According to critics, business contracts with the US government awarded to Perini, a company controlled by Blum, may raise a conflict-of-interest issue with Feinstein’s policies.

Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933, as Dianne Emiel Goldman in San Francisco. Her mother Betty Rosenburg was a former model and her father Leon Goldman was a surgeon.

Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland while her maternal grandparents were from Saint Petersburg, Russia. She went to a Roman Catholic school and a Jewish temple as a child.

In 1951, she graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, San Francisco, and in 1955, from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in history. She then interned at the Coro Foundation in San Francisco, where she gained political experience.

From 1960 to 1966, Dianne Feinstein worked on the California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole. She then chaired San Francisco’s Advisory Committee for Adult Detention from 1966 to 1968.

In 1969, she was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on which she served for nine years, becoming the president in 1978. After two unsuccessful attempts in 1971 and 1975, she became the acting Mayor of San Francisco in 1978 and the mayor the next year. She held the post till 1988.

As the mayor, she took up the challenge to re-start the San Francisco cable car system. A sum of $60 million was needed for the repair, so she helped get federal funding and the system was repaired and re-started in 1984.

On November 3, 1992, she became the first Jewish woman Senator from California, a seat she has been holding till date, after being re-elected in 1994, 2000, 2006, and 2012.

Her career has been dotted with many “firsts”—she was the first woman President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first woman Mayor of San Francisco, the first Jewish woman Senator of California, the first female member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

During Dianne Feinstein’s first term as the senator, she co-authored the Gun-Free Schools Act and the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act; both became laws in 1994. She spearheaded the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which became a law in 1994 and expired in 2004.

She headed the six-year review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, which resulted in the release of the report’s executive summary, which in turn, led to the passage of the legislation banning the use of torture in 2014.