Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs have three children together.
Brian Ach/WireImage via Getty
Steve Jobs left the bulk of his fortune to his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, when he died in 2011.
While she doesn’t plan to pass the fortune to her kids, they’ve benefited from their father’s fame.
The Apple cofounder has four kids who have pursued careers in everything from modeling to writing.
Steve Jobs is arguably the most influential tech leader in the history of modern computing.
In 1976, after he dropped out of college, Jobs cofounded Apple with his high-school friend, Steve Wozniak, while they were still in their 20s, according to “Steve Jobs,” a biography by Walter Isaacson.
Jobs helped turn Apple from a makeshift computer manufacturer housed inside his parents’ garage to a global tech giant now worth more than $2 trillion.
Jobs was also the father of four children. He had his oldest, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, with his high-school girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan. Later, he had Reed Jobs, Erin Jobs, and Eve Jobs with his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs.
Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, and died eight years later at 56, ABC News reported, leaving the majority of his fortune to Powell Jobs.
She does not plan to share her inheritance with her children. “I’m not interested in legacy wealth buildings,” she said in an interview with The New York Times.
“Steve wasn’t interested in that,” she told the Times. “If I live long enough, it ends with me.”
Each of Jobs’ children received millions of dollars from their father, the Times reported, and might be considered “nepo babies” — a label popularized by a New York Magazine story about Hollywood actors who rose to fame thanks, in part, to their family connections.
While Jobs’ children have largely pursued careers outside of tech, from modeling to writing, it’s likely their family name contributed to their success.
Apple, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Reed Jobs did not reply to requests for comment, nor did representatives for Lisa Brennan-Jobs and Eve Jobs. Erin Jobs could not be reached.
Meet Jobs’ four children and his widow Laurene Powell Jobs, and see how his legacy helped his loved ones succeed.
Laurene Powell Jobs
Powell Jobs inherited the bulk of Jobs’ fortune.
Getty
Laurene Powell Jobs inherited the majority of Jobs’ fortune when he died in 2011 — including his lucrative stakes in Apple and Disney.
Today, her net worth is estimated at $12.8 billion, per Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Powell Jobs first met Jobs when she was an MBA student at Stanford in 1989, according to Isaacson’s biography. Jobs was giving a guest lecture at the university when his future wife and her friend snuck into the lecture late and ended up sitting next to the Apple cofounder.
Powell Jobs later told Isaacson that the Apple cofounder “was not that big of a deal to me” and that she initially had him mixed up with Bill Gates. At the time, Jobs was working at Next, a computer-workstation company that was later bought by Apple.
Jobs recalled seeing this “beautiful girl” sitting next to him and later followed her to the parking lot. She agreed to a dinner date that night that turned into the two spending the night together, Isaacson wrote. Less than two years later, they got married.
During their marriage, the couple had three children: Reed, Erin, and Eve.
Since Jobs’ death, Powell Jobs has been active in philanthropy and founded Emerson Collective in 2004 as a “social change organization.” She has served on the boards of several nonprofits, including Teach for America and Conservation International, and has made donations to members of the Democratic Party.
Powell Jobs has also taken an interest in media. In 2017, she acquired a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine for over $100 million, per The Wall Street Journal. She also owns stakes in the sports teams the NBA Wizards and NHL Capitals.
Despite her billionaire status, Powell Jobs has said she doesn’t plan to pass on her fortune to any of her children.
“Steve wasn’t interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me,” she told The New York Times in 2020. “I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t care about the accumulation of wealth. I am doing this in honor of his work, and I’ve dedicated my life to doing the very best I can to distribute it effectively, in ways that lift up individuals and communities in a sustainable way.”
Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Lisa Brennan-Jobs is Steve Jobs oldest daughter.
Nathan Congleton/NBCUniversal/Getty Images
Even though Lisa Brennan-Jobs received millions from her father, The New York Times reported, the black sheep of the Jobs family did not always benefit from her wealthy father.
Lisa, now 44, is Steve Jobs’ first daughter. Her mother, Chrisann Brennan, who is a painter and memoirist, was Jobs’ high-school sweetheart.
For years, Jobs denied that he was Brennan-Jobs’ father and provided little financial or emotional support to her and her mother when Apple took off, per The New York Times. As a result, Brennan went on welfare and cleaned houses to support her daughter, according to Vanity Fair.
Despite the initial neglect, Brennan-Jobs moved in with Jobs as a teenager so they could work on their relationship, according to the Times. Still, she said they didn’t spend much time together.
After high school, Brennan-Jobs attended Harvard (which she admitted she might have gotten into because she dropped her father’s name during the admission interview, per the Times). She then moved to London and Italy to work in finance, pivoted to a design role, and then switched to freelance writing for magazines and literary journals, according to the Times.
Brennan-Jobs’ major breakthrough as a writer came in 2018 when she published “Small Fry,” a memoir that dives deep into her tumultuous relationship with her father. In it, she writes about the times he treated her poorly, from initially denying that his Apple Lisa computer was named after her to saying that she smelled “like a toilet.”
Despite all the turmoil, Brennan-Jobs said that she is “grateful” for her upbringing, per the Times.
She is now married to Bill Morein, a Microsoft employee turned tech-startup founder. They have three kids – Morein’s two daughters from a previous relationship and a son they had together, according to the Times.
Reed Jobs
Reed Jobs and his mother, Laurene Powell Jobs, at a 2022 state dinner.
Reuters
Reed Jobs — named after the university his father attended before dropping out, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography — is the son of Jobs and Laurene Powell Jobs, born just months after the two got married.
Of his four children, Jobs was closest to the 31-year-old, which came at the cost of Jobs’ relationships with his daughters, according to Isaacson’s biography.
Even though his father raised him to believe that wealth is futile, it was impossible for Reed and his siblings to avoid the privileges of being rich.
Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle who’s worth $93.3 billion and was a close friend of Jobs, would frequently take Jobs and his family out on joy rides on his many luxury yachts, according to Isaacson’s biography. Ironically, Reed would call Ellison “our rich friend.”
Reed was also exposed to his father’s business early on. When he was a senior in high school, his father took him to Hawaii so he could “be in the room with the best people in the world making really tough decisions,” like Apple executives and other high-level tech moguls, per Isaacson’s biography.
“I want you to be in every single one because you’ll learn more in those two days than you would in two years at business school,” Jobs said, according to Isaacson.
But Reed didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps.
In 2014, he got his bachelor’s degree in history and international security from Stanford University — a favorite of wealthy tech offspring like Steve Ballmer’s son Peter and Eric Schmidt’s daughter, Sophie, and where his mother attended business school — then stayed for another year to get his master’s degree in history.
Reed works at the Emerson Collective — the philanthropic organization his mother founded — as a managing director, leading a team that invests money into cancer research.
There were rumors in early 2022 that Reed considered running for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat once she retired, though he denied this claim, The Independent reported.
Erin Siena Jobs
Erin Siena Jobs is the most private of Steve Jobs’ children.
The 27-year-old does not appear to have any public profiles on social media, though her younger sister, Eve, posted a picture of Erin on Instagram for her birthday in 2021.
“To my lifelong best friend — happy birthday!!” Eve Jobs wrote next to an old picture of the two sisters on a boat that has since been deleted. “I love you I love you I love you.”
In Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, the writer described Erin Jobs as “quiet, introspective.”
Erin Jobs told Isaacson she sometimes wished she could have more of her father’s attention, but “he does his best to be both a father and the CEO of Apple, and he juggles those pretty well.”
Eve Jobs
Eve Jobs is the youngest of Jobs’ children.
Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP
Twenty-four-year-old Eve, the youngest of Steve Jobs’ children, is a model and an accomplished equestrian.
Unlike her older sister Erin, Eve is used to being in the spotlight. In 2020, she started her modeling career with a Glossier ad campaign alongside the “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney and the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” finalist Naomi Smalls, Vanity Fair reported. Last year, she signed with DNA Model Management — the same agency that represents Kaia Gerber and Emily Ratajkowski — and attended Paris Fashion Week, per Elle Magazine and Vogue.
Prior to launching a modeling career, Eve attended Stanford University — the same school her brother attended and where her mom got her MBA. She graduated in 2021 after studying science technology and society, Harper’s Bazaar reported.
During her college years, Eve Jobs was ranked No. 5 on the list of the top 1,000 riders under 25 around the world by Horse Sport in 2019. A year later, she said in an interview with World of Showjumping that “being able to compete in the Olympics and World Equestrian Games would be a dream.”
She is one of many nepo babies to take up horseback riding — from Bill Gates’ daughter to the daughters of Steven Spielberg and Bruce Springsteen. In 2016, her mother bought a $15 million ranch in Wellington, Florida, where she frequently competes and trains with a top equestrian coach, Missy Clark, Insider previously reported.
Steve Jobs told Isaacson he envisioned his youngest daughter running Apple someday or becoming president of the United States.
“She’s a pistol and has the strongest will of any kid I’ve ever met,” he told Isaacson.