Coenraad was baptised at home because his father Dirk van Beuningen and mother Catharina Burgh were Remonstrants and did not want to cause a fuss.

He was the grandson of Geurt van Beuningen as well as of Albert C. Burgh, both mayors of Amsterdam and heavily involved in the Dutch East India Company.

Three years later as an envoy in Copenhagen, he almost ended up in the hands of King Charles X Gustav of Sweden but succeeded in getting away in a small boat.

Losing the favour of stadholder William III an attempt was made on his life; it is said he was shocked and burnt part of his furniture.

In 1672 the Rampjaar, the local theatre, called Schouwburg of Van Campen, was shut during the war with the French, the English and two German bishops, Bernhard von Galen from Münster and Maximilian Henry of Bavaria from Cologne.

In 1686, Van Beuningen married his neighbour, the rich and lewd Jacoba Victoria Bartolotti, many years his junior.

Attacked in his various roles for making these suggestions, he renounced them, but claimed the company's success was the work of its capable administrators in its first twenty years.

In his last years Van Beuningen wrote letters to the ecclesiastical authorities about the coming apocalypse, painting Hebrew or Kabbalistic signs on his house at the Amstel.

He was locked up nearby and died in Amsterdam on 26 October 1693, leaving 'a cape and two dressing gowns,' a bed, some chairs, a desk, an oval shaped mirror, four old taborets and 'a man's portrait' by Rembrandt valued at seven guilders (three dollars).