[1] Born in Shandong, China, to parents from the United States who were serving as Presbyterian missionaries, Luce moved to the US at the age of 15 and later attended Yale University.

He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of millions of Americans.

Time summarized and interpreted the week's news; Life was a picture magazine of politics, culture, and society that dominated American visual perceptions in the era before television; Fortune reported on national and international business; and Sports Illustrated explored the world of sports.

He was subsidized by an elderly Chicago heiress, Nancy Fowler McCormick, who favored sons of missionaries.

He was the top freshman academically, but grades did not confer as much prestige as a staff role on the Yale Daily News.

[6] Nightly discussions of the concept of a news magazine led Luce and Hadden, both age 23, to quit their jobs in 1922.

Later that same year, they partnered with Robert Livingston Johnson and another Yale classmate to form Time Inc.[7] Luce, supported by editor-in-chief T. S. Matthews, appointed Whittaker Chambers as acting Foreign News editor in 1944, despite the feuds that Chambers had with reporters in the field.

[8] Luce, who remained editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964, maintained a position as an influential member of the Republican Party.

[9] An instrumental figure behind the so-called "China Lobby", he played a large role in steering American foreign policy and popular sentiment in favor of Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, in their war against the Japanese.

[11] He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 32¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp.