François Henry Pinault was born May 28, 1962 in Rennes, Brittany, France.

He is the son of Francois Pinault, the founder and former President of the is retail company PPR. The father led PPR through a long battle over control of Gucci, the Italian fashion house, which began with an attempted takeover of Gucci by LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. In March of 1999, Gucci asked PPR to acquire an ownership interest in Gucci to help fend off LVMH. The result was a struggle between the two richest men in France, both self-made billionaires - Pinault and Bernard Arnault, the Chairman of LVMH.

He graduated from the HEC School of Management in 1985, and joined the Pinault group in 1987.

Since 2005 he is he is the CEO of this company, which ncludes retail brands such as FNAC, La Redoute, Conforama, and luxury brands such as Gucci Group, which includes Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Yves Saint Laurent, Boucheron and Balenciaga.

He began his career at Pinault Distribution, a subsidiary specialized in the importation and distribution of timber. Appointed Chairman and CEO in 1991, he developed and consolidated the business, with a particular focus on procurements, products and reference listing policies.

In 1993, he became Chairman and CEO of CFAO, the leading distributor of automobiles and pharmaceuticals on the African continent and in French overseas territories.

Four years later, he was appointed Chairman and CEO of Fnac, France's leading distributor of cultural and leisure products.

In 2000, he was appointed Deputy CEO of the Pinault-Printemps-Redoute group, where he oversaw the Group's internet activities among other responsibilities.

He became Co-Managing Director of Financière Pinault in 2001. In June 2003, he was appointed Chairman of Artémis Group, the family holding company which controls, notably, Christie's and Château Latour, and holds a 40,3% equity stake in the PPR group.

Pinault was engaged to Mexican actress Salma Hayek in March 2007. Their daughter, Valentina Paloma Pinault, was born on September 21, 2007. She is Hayek's first child, but Pinault's third, as he had been previously married to a patricia M and the father of two children, a marriage which ended in divorce in 2004. The couple announced on July 18, 2008, that they had called off their engagement, and reasons were never disclosed. On Saturday, February 14, 2009, Pinault and Hayek were married in the City Hall of the Sixth Arrondissement in Paris.