Dianne Feinstein.

Dianne Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933 in San Francisco, California to Leon Goldman, a surgeon who became the first Jewish chair of surgery at UCSF, and Betty Rosenberg, a model who fled the Bolshevik Revolution with her czarist Russian Orthodox father. Her grandfather escaped pogroms in Russian-occupied Poland and rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. Feinstein graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and Stanford University in 1955. Her mother’s attempt to drown her younger daughter and the family’s immigrant hardships forged her resilience.

California Governor Pat Brown appointed Feinstein to the state women’s parole board, leveraging her father’s connection as a patient. She became the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. That year fellow supervisor Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk; Feinstein discovered Moscone’s body and became mayor. She served from 1978 to 1988, once holding a press conference that revealed serial killer Richard Ramirez’s shoe model, which caused him to discard them. In 1990 she won the Democratic primary for governor but lost the general election to Republican Pete Wilson. Two years later she defeated state Controller Gray Davis and Republican John Seymour for a U.S. Senate seat, which she held until her death in 2023. Feinstein chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2015 and served on the Judiciary Committee.

Feinstein married three times: to Jack Kuciel Berman from 1956 to 1960, to Dr. Bertram Feinstein from 1962 until his death in 1978, and to investment banker Richard Charles Blum from 1980 until his death in 2022. Her daughter Katherine Anne was born on July 31, 1957. During the 1980s threats against her family led her to carry a firearm permit, though she later stopped. Walter Mondale considered her for the vice presidential nomination in 1984 but chose Geraldine Ferraro. Feinstein stood 5 feet 10 inches tall.

Feinstein served as one of the longest-serving female senators in U.S. history and the first woman to be president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Her calm handling of the 1978 assassinations and mayoral leadership defined her early career. In the Senate she pushed for intelligence oversight and authored the 1994 assault weapons ban. In 1984 she was a finalist for the vice presidential nomination; in 2022 she declined the president pro tempore role, supporting Patty Murray instead. She is remembered for her 31-year Senate career and her role in San Francisco’s recovery after the assassinations.