He was also noted as an art collector and held several public offices in the city-state of Hamburg.

He was a son of the Hamburg merchant banker and senator Rudolf Berenberg (1680–1746) and Anna Elisabeth Amsinck (1690–1748), and a grandson of Cornelius Berenberg and of the Lisbon and Hamburg merchant Paul Amsinck.

He was married to Anna Maria Lastrop (1723–1761), who belonged to a wealthy merchant family from Hamburg and Bremen,[2] and they had two children.

His only son Rudolf Berenberg was possibly mentally ill and died in the Dutch colony of Suriname in 1768, aged 20; he had apparently been sent to manage his family's business interests there.

Three years after Berenberg's death, Johann Hinrich Gossler succeeded him as the company's head and sole owner.