Fayez Shalaby Sarofim was born in 1929 in Cairo. His family belonged to the old nobility of Egypt. As the son of an Egyptian aristocrat and agricultural magnate, Sarofim spent his early life as a member of Egypt’s political and wealthy elite in modern Heliopolis. Holding the title of a Bey (or Chieftain), Sarofim’s father also held large, feudal cotton estates throughout North Africa. Upon his death, Sarofim inherited a portion of his fortune.

Sarofim came to the United States in 1946 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1961. After, earning degrees from the University of California Berkeley, and Harvard Business School, Sarofim took a job with cotton company Anderson, Clayton and Company in Houston.

In August 1958, he founded Fayez Sarofim & Company, a Houston investment firm. In 1997, he was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame. Sarofim is ranked third on the most influential Egyptian Americans. The Sarofim family is recorded in Burke’s Peerage and the ‘Imperial and Asiatic quarterly review and oriental and colonial record’.

Sarofim has been married three times. In 1962, he married Louisa Stude, adopted daughter of Herman Brown, founder of Brown and Root; they had two children: Christopher Sarofim and Allison Sarofim.

In 1984, he had a son, Andrew Sarofim, with Linda Hicks, a former employee at his company. In 1986, they had another son and in 1989, she had another child with a different father whom Sarofim adopted. In 1990, he divorced his first wife who received a $250 million divorce settlement. In 1990, he married Hicks; in 1996, they divorced with Hicks receiving a $12 million settlement. Hicks later died while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

In December 2014, he married Susan Krohn, the ex-wife of fellow billionaire Tracy Krohn, and mother of his son Phillip’s wife Lori Krohn.