Herb Simon

Origins and early life

Herbert Simon was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 23 October 1934, the son of Max and Mae Simon; his father was a tailor who had emigrated from Central Europe, and Herb grew up in the Bronx with his elder brothers Melvin and Fred. He earned a business degree at City College of New York, and in 1959 Melvin, who had settled in Indianapolis after his army service, asked him to join him there.

Work and career

In 1960 the brothers, with Fred, launched Melvin Simon & Associates, which began with strip centres anchored by grocery stores and drugstores and went on to build enclosed shopping malls across the country. When the company went public as Simon Property Group in 1993, he served as its chief executive until 1995, then as co-chairman of the board until 2007, and as chairman emeritus until he retired on 4 February 2025.

In 1983 he and Melvin bought the Indiana Pacers at the request of city leaders, which kept the basketball team in Indianapolis, and by his brother's death in 2009 he had become its sole owner and the chairman of Pacers Sports & Entertainment. The same group owns the Indiana Fever, which began play in the WNBA in 2000 and won the league championship in 2012. In 2024 he was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor, honoured as the longest-tenured governor in the history of the NBA.

Born to a Jewish family, he once went to the Lilly Endowment to ask for a grant for the Jewish Community Center, and when his enshrinement in October 2024 fell during Yom Kippur, he spent the holy day with his whole family and stayed away from the press conferences. In 1999 he founded the Herbert Simon Family Foundation, which supports Central Indiana organisations working in the arts, basic needs, the environment and social justice, and in 2010 he bought the book review magazine Kirkus Reviews.