Lenfest, along with his wife Marguerite, were among the most prominent Philadelphia-based philanthropists in his last two decades, donating more than $1.3 billion to 1,100 groups, supporting various educational, artistic, journalistic, and healthcare causes.

[2] Lenfest was born on May 29, 1930, in Jacksonville, Florida,[2] then grew up in Scarsdale, New York, and Hunterdon County, New Jersey.

[5] After graduating from Columbia Law School, Lenfest worked at the firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell before becoming, in 1965, associate counsel to Triangle Publications, Inc., the media company controlled by Walter Annenberg.

[3] He formed Lenfest Communications Inc. (LCI) in 1974; using funds from loans and two investors, the new privately held company purchased two cable systems with 7,600 customers from Annenberg.

[8] AT&T's sale of Lenfest Communications to Comcast helped AT&T gain regulatory approval for its purchase of MediaOne.

[9] Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest were among the most prominent Philadelphia-based philanthropists in his last two decades, donating more than $1.3 billion to 1,100 groups, supporting various educational, artistic, journalistic, and healthcare causes.

[2] The university's president, Lee C. Bollinger, said in 2009 that the Lenfests were "the fourth-most-generous donors to Columbia" in the institution's history, giving more than $100 million up to that point.

[17] Lenfest's donations to Temple University funded the construction of the Joe First Media Center for the Klein College of Media and Communication, the renovation of the Lew Klein Hall at the Temple Performing Arts Center, and restoration work at the East Park Canoe House, which houses the university's rowing and crew teams.

[16] Although he was not himself a rower, Lenfest was a longtime admirer of Philadelphia's Boathouse Row, and believed preserving the heritage of the sport on the Schuylkill River was important.

[3] Marguerite Lenfest also served on the board of various institutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

[10] Lenfest Hall, which opened in 2011 and was designed by the architectural firm of Robert Venturi, is named in his honor.

[21][22] The Lenfests collected works by painters in the Pennsylvania Impressionism movement; in 1999, they donated 59 paintings, as well as $3 million, to the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and later acquired three additional paintings by Edward Willis Redfield that they added to their donation to the Michener.

[23] In 2007, Lenfest donated hundreds of acres of land in Newlin Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania to form the ChesLen Preserve.

Located close to West Branch Brandywine Creek, the mixture of woodlands and agricultural areas eventually reached 1,263 acres; it is crisscrossed with hiking trails and is intended to remain minimally developed in perpetuity.

Hall fired the newspaper's top editor, Bill Marimow, prompting a public furor.

[33] Katz and Lenfest sued in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, seeking Marimow's reinstatement as editor, and arguing that the attempted firing violated the ownership agreement; Norcross countersued.

[34] In April 2014, amid continued disputes among the company's owners, a judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered the dissolution of Interstate General Media (the ownership group's Delaware LLC, which owned PNM), and the sale of PNM at a private auction among the current owners.

[35][36] At the court-ordered auction the following month, Lenfest and Katz purchased PNM, outbidding fellow minority owners Norcross and Joseph Buckelew.

[32] Lenfest also gave $20 million to endow the nonprofit journalism institute, which owns the newspapers and website but has no editorial or managerial control over them.

[40] In addition to supporting the Inquirer, the institute gave $7.5 million in grants to various press organizations, including WHYY.