[6] He was baptized by the French nuncio Angelo Roncalli (later elected Pope John XXIII) and was brought up in great privilege in Venice, Italy.

[2] He earned a degree in economics from the University of Geneva, followed by an 14-month term on a peace mission in Burundi working as a teacher, and then two years as an investment banker in New York.

[2] While studying at a university, he met 1965 fellow student[2] Diane Simone Michelle Halfin,[6] a Belgian-born Jewish woman of Romanian-Greek descent and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

[citation needed] The new Princess Diane von Fürstenberg was pregnant, and Egon's father, who objected to his son marrying a Jew, attended the wedding ceremony but boycotted the reception.

Fürstenberg began his career as a buyer for Macy's, taking night classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology,[2] and Parson's School of Design.