Smith was born in
Denver, Colorado, the fourth generation in his family to be born in Colorado.[3] His parents were Dr. William Robert Smith, an elementary school principal, and Dr. Sylvia Myrna Smith, the principal of
George Washington High School, who both had PhDs in education.[4][3][5][6] His father had attended the
University of Denver on a band scholarship, playing percussion and piano.[7] Asked about his mother in 2020, he said: "She usually calls me to tell me what I can do a little better."[4] His paternal grandmother was an educator, and his paternal grandfather was a
Pullman Porter.[3] His maternal grandfather was a postmaster for three post offices in the Washington, D.C. area, and before that while in high school worked in the U.S.
Russell Senate Office Building, serving coffee and taking hats and coats in the lounge.[4]
Smith then attended
East High School ('81) in Denver.[11] While in high school, he applied for an internship at
Bell Labs, but was told the program was intended for college students. Smith persisted, calling each Monday for five months. When a student from
M.I.T. did not show up, he got the position, and that summer he developed a
reliability test for
semiconductors.[12][13]
In 2000, Smith founded
Vista Equity Partners, an
Austin, Texas-based
private equity and
venture capital firm of which he is the principal founder, chairman, and chief executive.[21][23] Vista purchased
enterprise software businesses and brought performance improvements to the businesses.[3] According to Black Enterprise magazine, Smith was credited with consistently generating a 30% rate of return for his investors from the company's inception through 2020.[24] As of 2019, Vista Equity Partners was the fourth-largest
enterprise software company, after
Microsoft,
Oracle, and
SAP, including all their holdings.[25][26][27] Vista has invested in companies such as STATS,
Ping Identity, and
Jio.[28][29][30] As of 2019, Vista Equity Partners had closed more than $46 billion of funding.[31]
In 2016, Smith was named Private Equity International's Game Changer of the Year for his work with Vista.[32]
In 2018, Smith was included in Vanity Fair's New Establishment List, which is an annual ranking of individuals who have made impactful business innovations.[33][34] The 2019 PitchBook Private Equity Awards named Vista Equity Partners "Dealmaker of the Year".[35]
Smith joined The Austin Trail of Lights as a partner in 2012, and since then, Smith and Vista Equity Partners have sponsored programs and displays of the event. The event is the longest-running display of holiday lights in Austin, TX.[37]
In 2013, Smith joined the Carnegie Hall Board of Trustees and donated money to expand Link Up, which creates a free music education curriculum for elementary students.[38]
In 2014, Smith and Vista Equity Partners sponsored the Menuhin Competition's first visit to the U.S. in Austin, TX. The competition is the world’s leading international competition for young violinists.[39]
In 2015, Smith sponsored the college education of all returned
Boko Haram girls.[40][41] Also in 2015, Smith and his wife provided support to the non-profit organization Foster Love through Fund II Foundation by creating the Family Fellowship Program. This program provides financial and emotional support to students within the program. Smith has hosted fellows at his home in Colorado during the winter season.[42]
In 2016, Smith and his brother worked with the
United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to establish the UNCF Sylvia M. Young Smith Scholarship Program. The program awards six merit-based scholarships valued at $100,000 to students attending HBCUs in the U.S.[43][44] Following this, he donated $50 million to Cornell University, of which $20 million went to Cornell University’s College of Engineering and $10 million in Tech Scholars scholarships for Black Americans and women. This donation resulted in the university renaming its engineering school the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. That same year, he donated $1 million to Carnegie Hall.[11][7]
Also in 2016, Smith donated $20 million to the
National Museum of African American History and Culture. His donation helped establish the Robert F. Smith Explore Your Family History Center and the Robert Frederick Smith Internship and Fellowship Program.[45][46] He also contributed $250,000 to the Sphinx Organization. The donation helped create the Robert Frederick Smith Prize, which awards some of the winners of the Sphinx Competition with $50,000 to provide access to professional development and other resources that can help create bridges to careers in classical music.[47]
Through Fund II Foundation, Smith helped to establish the African American Health Equity Initiative (AAHEI), now known as Stand for H.E.R.– Healthy Equity Revolution, at the Komen Foundation with a $27 million donation in 2016.[48]
In May 2017,
The Giving Pledge announced that Smith had joined as its first Black American signatory.[49] That year, he also made a $15 million donation to Columbia Business School to help it expand to its new
Manhattanville campus.[50] Also in 2017, Smith contributed an additional $1 million to the Sphinx Organization.[51]
In 2018, Smith was the largest individual donor at the
City of Hope Gala, which funds
prostate cancer treatment and
breast cancer research for black men and women.[52] That same year, Smith donated $2.5 million to the
Prostate Cancer Foundation to advance prostate cancer research among Black American men and created the Robert Frederick Smith Precision Oncology Center of Excellence in Chicago, located at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center.[53][54] Also in 2018, Smith donated $1 million to the Cultural Performance Center at the
Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park in Harlem, which was later renamed the Robert Frederick Smith Center for Performing Arts.[55] Also in 2018, Fund II Foundation gave a $3 million grant to the
Louis Armstrong House Museum, with the grant helping digitize Armstrong's collection to make it available to the public and hire fellows and interns.[56][57][58]
On May 19, 2019, during his 2019
commencement speech at
Morehouse College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia, Smith said he would pay off the entire
student loan debt of the 2019 Morehouse College graduating class of 396 students, a reported $34M in student loan debt, including the debt incurred by parents and guardians.[4][59][60][61][62][63][64] He had previously donated $1.5 million to the school in January 2019, to be used for the Robert Frederick Smith Scholars Program and a campus park with an outdoor study area.[65]
Smith established internXL through Fund II Foundation in 2019 to help match diverse internship candidates with paid internships at leading companies. Smith stated that he was inspired by his own internship experience with Bell Labs, which is what led him to create the platform.[66][67]
Under Smith’s leadership, Fund II Foundation made a preservation gift in 2019 to buy and preserve the homes of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through the National Park Service.[68] Fund II Foundation also made a contribution of $3 million to the Sphinx Organization in 2019 under Smith’s leadership.[51]
In a June 2020 report, Time reported the launch of Student Freedom Initiative (SFI) with a contribution of $50 million from Fund II Foundation and an additional $50 million from Smith, to benefit HBCU students.[69]
In 2021, Smith partnered with Goalsetter on an initiative to help one million Black and LatinX youth become shareholders, and Smith gifted five shares of stock — equivalent to approximately 15,000 shares — to 2,900 students, educators, and staff members.[70]
In January 2022, he donated $10 million to Columbia Business School, to fund the Robert F. Smith ‘94 Scholarship Fund for students graduating from historically black colleges and universities, from diverse backgrounds who have overcome significant hardships or challenges in their academic pursuits, or who have demonstrated a strong commitment to engaging principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.[71][50]
In February 2022, SFI, partnered with
Prudential Financial to provide up to $1.8 million in microgrants to students of HBCUs.[72][73]
In May 2022, Cornell University announced a $15 million donation from Smith that will provide financial aid to engineering students from historically underrepresented communities. The gift will support an undergraduate scholarship fund to provide at least 7 students a year from urban high schools with up to $45,000 in grants, in addition to setting up a graduate fellowship fund to support 12 master’s students and five doctoral students who attended historically black colleges and universities.[76] Smith had previously made a donation that provided similar funding for underrepresented students at Cornell’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.[7][11][76]
In June 2023, Smith helped launch a new branch location of
Grameen America in Atlanta, Georgia through his leadership of Southern Communities Initiative. The goal of this branch is to help support a greater number of entrepreneurial women of color.[77] Also in 2023, it was announced that Mansa, a free ad-supported streaming service, would be launching, for which Smith provided initial funding.[78]
Smith co-founded Anglers of Honor., a charitable organization that strives to make therapeutic fly-fishing opportunities available to individuals with physical disabilities and their families and is a River Deep alliance program.[79]
Smith has also donated $300,000 to Jane Goodall’s youth environmental program Roots and Shoots.[80]
Politics
In December 2022, taking a stand together against increasing instances of racism and antisemitism in the US, Smith joined New York City Mayor
Eric Adams, Reverends
Al Sharpton and
Conrad Tillard, World Values Network founder and CEO Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach, and
Elisha Wiesel to host 15 Days of Light, celebrating
Hanukkah and
Kwanzaa in a unifying holiday ceremony at Carnegie Hall. [81][82] Smith said: "When we unify the souls of our two communities, we can usher in light to banish the darkness of racism, bigotry, and antisemitism."[83]
Tax fine
In the 1990s, businessman
Robert T. Brockman approached Smith about creating a private equity fund, and offered to back the initial fund.[84][85] As part of the deal, Brockman required an offshore trust be set up to conceal earnings from tax authorities and avoid litigation in US courts.[84][85] Brockman also required that the first fund be located in the Cayman Islands, and set aside some of the interest earned to protect him against losses.[86] Brockman's proposal was a "take-it-or-leave-it offer".[84][85] According to Smith's later non-prosecution agreement, Brockman dictated "the unique terms and unorthodox structure to the arrangement" and he accepted the offer as a "unique business opportunity he eagerly wanted to pursue".[84][85] Brockman's lawyer helped Smith set up the offshore entity.[87][88]
In October 2020, Smith entered into a
non-prosecution agreement with the
United States Department of Justice (DOJ), agreeing to assist the DOJ in a separate case against Brockman who was charged that month with what the DOJ called the "largest ever" tax fraud scheme by a U.S. citizen, and to pay a fine of $139 million.[89][90][91][92][93][94] According to the DOJ, Brockman led Smith to use the offshore trust that concealed income.[85] Brockman died in August 2022, while his trial was pending.[89]
Other achievements
Smith has served as the chairman of
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights,[95] on the board of overseers of Columbia Business School, as a member of the Cornell Engineering College Council,[96] on the Cornell University Tech Board,[20] and since 2008 as a Trustee of the
Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco.[17][97]
In 2014, Smith became the founding director and president of the Fund II Foundation.[98][99][100]
Smith became the board chairman of
Carnegie Hall in 2016, the first African-American to hold that position; he had been a member of the board since 2013.[8][101][7] Since 2018, Smith has served as a board member of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.[57][58]
In April 2020, Governor
Greg Abbott named Smith to the Strike Force to Open Texas – a group "tasked with finding safe and effective ways to slowly reopen the state" amid the
COVID-19 pandemic.[102]
In October 2022, media outlets including
TMZ,[103]Revolt TV,[104]Variety, and Vibe Magazine[105] published an article highlighting Smith being nominated by
Floyd Mayweather, Jr. to serve as executive producer of a series of film and television projects titled "The GOAT" aimed to tell Mayweather's life story. Mayweather said: “As someone who owns his own brand, I can’t think of better partners than Deon (
Deon Taylor), Roxanne (Roxanne Avent Taylor), Robert F. Smith — the wealthiest African American in the world — and Hidden Empire Films, a prolific Black-owned production company.”[106]
In 2024, Smith was interviewed by Tony Robbins for his New York Times #1 Bestseller, The Holy Grail of Investing. [107]
In 2017, Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of Denver.[115][116] That year, Smith was also named by Forbes as one of the 100 greatest living business minds.[117] That year Smith also received Ebony’s John H. Johnson Award.[118] Also in 2017, Smith was named in The Chronicle of Philanthropy's "Philanthropy 50".[119]
He received an honorary doctorate at Morehouse College in 2019.[60][61][62][63] He was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame as a Class of 2019 Legend.[123] In October 2019, Smith received the
Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, which is given to individuals who have donated private wealth to the public.[124] He also received the 2019
United Negro College Fund President’s Award.[112]
Smith was included in the
Time 100 in 2020, Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[125] In 2020, he was also recognized by Cornell University with its Distinguished Alumni Award.[14][59]
In 1988, Smith married his first wife, fellow Cornell alum Suzanne McFayden. They divorced in 2014. Smith married
Hope Dworaczyk, the founder and CEO of skincare company MUTHA, a former Playboy playmate,
healthy living advocate, and fashion editor, on July 25, 2015, after she gave birth to their first child in December 2014.[128][129][130] Smith has three children with his first wife.[131] He also has two sons and two daughters with his wife Hope.[132] Smith owns homes in
Austin, Texas,
Malibu, California, New York City, Denver, and Florida.[133][21][134][135][136]
Smith partnered with Matthew Burkett to purchase the historic
Lincoln Hills, Colorado property in
Gilpin County in 2007 and convert it into an exclusive invitation-only fly fishing club.[3][137] Lincoln Hills was founded in 1922 as a destination summer resort for Black families.[3][138] He now uses it to host musicians and underprivileged schoolchildren.[7]
In a 2018 cover story, Forbes said that Smith the wealthiest African-American, passing
Oprah Winfrey.[117] As of 2021, Smith was one of 15 Black billionaires in the world.[6] In November 2023, Forbes said his net worth was $9.2 billion, and that he was the 78th-richest person in the United States, and the 235th-richest person in the world.[139]