Diana Rein

Feinstein graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, San Francisco in 1951 and from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in History.

Born in San Francisco, Feinstein graduated from Stanford University in 1955 with a B.A. in history. In the 1960s, she worked in city government, and in 1970, she was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She served as the board's first female President in 1978, during which time the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk drew national attention. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as Mayor of San Francisco and became the first female to assume the position. During her tenure, she led renovation of the city's cable car system, and oversaw the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

Feinstein has been married three times. In 1956, Feinstein married Jack Berman (d. 2002), a colleague in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. She and Berman divorced three years later. Their daughter, Katherine Feinstein Mariano (b. 1957), was the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court for twelve years, through 2012. In 1962, shortly after beginning her career in politics, Feinstein married her second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, who died of colon cancer in 1978. In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker. In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of US$26 million. By 2005 her net worth had increased to between US$43 million and US$99 million. Her 347-page financial-disclosure statement – characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as "nearly the size of a phone book" – draws clear lines between her assets and those of her husband, with many of her assets in blind trusts.

In 1969, Feinstein was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She remained on the Board for nine years.

During her tenure on the Board of Supervisors, she unsuccessfully ran for mayor of San Francisco twice, in 1971 against mayor Joseph Alioto, and in 1975, when she lost the contest for a runoff slot (against George Moscone) by one percentage point, to supervisor John Barbagelata.

On 4 June 1977, Dianne Feinstein was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. She was awarded the Legion of Honour by France in 1984. Feinstein was presented with the Woodrow Wilson Award for public Service by the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution on November 3, 2001, in Los Angeles.

As President of the Board of Supervisors upon the death of Moscone, Feinstein succeeded to the mayoralty on December 4, 1978.

One of Feinstein's first challenges as mayor was the state of the San Francisco cable car system, which had been shut down for emergency repairs in 1979; an engineering study concluded that it needed comprehensive rebuilding at a cost of $60 million. Feinstein helped win federal funding for the bulk of the work. The system closed for rebuilding in 1982 and the work was completed just in time for the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Feinstein also oversaw planning policies to increase the number of high rise buildings in San Francisco.

Feinstein was seen as a relatively moderate Democrat in one of the country's most liberal cities. As a supervisor, she was considered part of the centrist bloc that included Dan White and was generally opposed to Moscone. As mayor, Feinstein angered the city's large gay community by refusing to march in a gay rights parade and by vetoing domestic partner legislation in 1982. In the 1980 presidential election, while a majority of Bay Area Democrats continued to support Senator Ted Kennedy's primary challenge to President Jimmy Carter even after it was clear Kennedy could not win, Feinstein was a strong supporter of the Carter–Mondale ticket. She was given a high-profile speaking role on the opening night of the August Democratic National Convention, urging delegates to reject the Kennedy delegates' proposal to "open" the convention, thereby allowing delegates to ignore their states' popular vote, a proposal that was soundly defeated.

In 1985, at a press conference, Feinstein revealed details about the hunt for serial killer Richard Ramírez, and in so doing angered detectives by giving away details of his crimes.

In 1987, City and State magazine named Feinstein the nation's "Most Effective Mayor". Feinstein served on the Trilateral Commission during the 1980s while mayor of San Francisco.

In the run-up to the 1984 Democratic National Convention, there was considerable media and public speculation that Mondale might pick Feinstein as his running mate. However, he chose Geraldine Ferraro instead. Also in 1984, Feinstein proposed banning handguns in San Francisco, and became subject to a recall attempt organized by the White Panther Party. She won the recall election and finished her second term as mayor on January 8, 1988.

In 1990, Feinstein made an unsuccessful bid for Governor of California. Although she won the Democratic Party's nomination for the office, she lost in the general election to Republican Senator Pete Wilson, who vacated his seat in the Senate to assume the governorship. In 1992, she was fined $190,000 for failure to properly report campaign contributions and expenditures associated with that campaign.

On November 3, 1992, Feinstein won a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated a year earlier when Senator Pete Wilson resigned to become governor. The election was held at the same time as the general election for U.S. President and other offices. Barbara Boxer was elected at the same time for the Senate seat to be vacated by Alan Cranston. Because Feinstein was elected to an unexpired term, she became a senator as soon as the election was certified in November while Boxer would not take office until the expiration of Cranston's term in January; thus Feinstein became California's senior senator, even though she was elected at the same time as Boxer and Boxer had previous congressional Service. Feinstein was re-elected in 1994, 2000, 2006, and 2012. In 2012, Feinstein claimed the record for the most popular votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, having received 7.75 million votes. The record was previously held by her California colleague Barbara Boxer, who received 6.96 million votes in her 2004 re-election.

Feinstein introduced the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which became law in 1994 and expired in 2004. In January 2013, about one month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Feinstein, along with Representative Carolyn McCarthy from New York, proposed a bill that would "ban the sale, transfer, Manufacturing or importation of 150 specific firearms including semiautomatic rifles or pistols that can be used with a detachable or fixed ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and have specific military-style features, including pistol grips, grenade launchers or rocket launchers". The bill would have exempted 900 Models of guns used for sport and hunting. Feinstein commented on the bill, saying, "The Common thread in each of these shootings is the gunman used a semi-automatic assault weapon or large capacity ammunition magazines. Military assault weapons only have one purpose, and in my opinion, it's for the military." The bill failed on a Senate vote of 60 to 40.

In 2002, Feinstein won the American Medical Association's Nathan Davis Award for "the Betterment of the Public Health".

In September 2005, Feinstein was one of five Democratic senators to vote against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts on the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying she still was not aware of Roberts' stances on certain issues such as abortion and the right to death.

In January 2006, Feinstein confirmed she would vote against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, though disagreed with filibustering the choice: "When it comes to filibustering a Supreme Court appointment, you really have to have something out there, whether it's gross moral turpitude or something that comes to the surface. This is a man I might disagree with, (but) that doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."

As a superdelegate in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Feinstein had declared that she would support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. However, once Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee for the party, she fully backed his candidacy. Days after Obama amassed enough delegates to win the Democratic Party nomination, Feinstein lent her Washington, D. C., home to both Clinton and Obama to have a private one-on-one meeting. Feinstein did not attend the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver because she had fallen and broken her ankle earlier in the month.

She chaired the United States Congress Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, and acted as mistress of ceremonies, introducing each participant at the 2009 presidential inauguration.

On May 12, 2011, Feinstein co-sponsored PIPA. In January 2012, Feinstein met with representatives of Technology companies, including Google and Facebook. According to a spokesperson, Feinstein "is doing all she can to ensure that the bill is balanced and protects the intellectual property concerns of the content community without unfairly burdening legitimate businesses such as Internet search engines".

Following her 2012 vote to extend the Patriot Act and the FISA provisions, and after the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures involving the National Security Agency (NSA), Feinstein promoted and supported measures to continue the information collection programs. Foreign Policy wrote that she had a "reputation as a staunch defender of NSA practices and [of] the White House's refusal to stand by collection activities targeting foreign leaders".

Heading into the 2016 Presidential Election, Senator Feinstein was one of sixteen Democratic female senators to sign a letter, on October 20, 2013, endorsing Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee.

Speaking on the Senate floor on December 9, 2014, Feinstein called the government's detention and interrogation program a "stain on our values and on our history", following the release of 600 pages declassified out of a 6000-page report about CIA methods.

In 2015, she was named as one of The Forward 50.

After the 2016 FBI–Apple encryption dispute, Feinstein, along with Richard Burr, sponsored a bill that would be likely to criminalize all forms of strong encryption in electronic communication between citizens. The bill would require Technology companies to design their encryption so that they can provide law enforcement with user data in an "intelligible format" when required to do so by court order.

In January 2017, Feinstein had an artificial cardiac pacemaker inserted at George Washington University Hospital.

On January 9, 2018, Feinstein caused a stir when she, as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a transcript of the committee's August 2017 interview with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson about the dossier regarding connections between the president's campaign and the Russian government. She did this unilaterally after the committee's chairman, Chuck Grassley, refused to release the transcript of Simpson's testimony. She was derided by President Trump as "sneaky Dianne".