Perelman holds significant shares in companies such as Deluxe Entertainment, Revlon,[4] SIGA Technologies,[5][6] RetailMeNot,[7] Merisant, Scantron, Scientific Games Corporation,[8] Valassis, vTv Therapeutics[9] and Harland Clarke.

[12] Perelman was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on January 1, 1943, the son of Ruth (née Caplan) and Raymond G.

Raymond eventually left the company and bought Belmont Iron Works, a manufacturer of structural steel.

[20] By the time Ronald turned eleven years old he regularly sat in on board meetings of his father's company.

[23] Perelman's first major business deal took place in 1961 during his Freshman year at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1978, twelve years after Perelman formally joined Belmont Industries, he was the vice president but he still strove for more power and influence in the company.

[25] He orchestrated the purchase of Cohen-Hatfield Jewelers in 1978, his first deal as an independent investor free of his father's influence and took a loan from his wife, Faith Golding.

He faced resistance from the management and investors who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to prevent the acquisition, but Perelman prevailed.

Using the proceeds from the Technicolor division sell off, MacAndrews & Forbes purchased a 20 percent stake in Compact Video Inc., a television and film syndication company.

[35] MacAndrews & Forbes's current holdings include Deluxe,[36] Revlon,[37] SIGA Technologies,[38] VTV,[39] and as of late 2019, 39% of Scientific Games.

[42] He has also done deals with Revlon Corporation,[43] thrifts for $315 million and renamed it First Gibraltar Bank,[44][45] Coleman Company, Sunbeam Products,[46] and New World Entertainment.

[tone] After a five-week trial, the jury deliberated for two days, found in favor of Perelman, and awarded him $1.45 billion.

The judges declared Perelman hadn't provided any evidence showing he'd suffered any actual damage as a result of Morgan Stanley's actions.

[57] In 2015, Perelman donated $500,000 each to Super PACs supporting the presidential candidacies of Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush.

[64] From 2006 through 2008, Perelman donated $63.5 million to causes including, but not limited to: Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C), World Trade Center Memorial Fund and Ford's Theatre, Carnegie Hall and the World Trade Center Memorial.

The gift will be used to support the construction of new facilities in Manhattanville, including the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Business Innovation.

[76] In August 2021, Princeton University announced that it would no longer name a newly constructed student dormitory for Perelman after the family foundation failed to make payments on a pledged $65 million donation.

At the time, M&F Worldwide was a healthy company with an excellent balance sheet while Panavision was bleeding red ink.

M&F Worldwide's other shareholders cried foul, alleging the only person who stood to benefit from the deal was Perelman and took their complaints to the courts.

[83] Perelman insisted the deal was an excellent one and in the best interest of the shareholders because Panavision was well-positioned to profit from the move to digital cinematography.

She further declared he had defrauded the owners of First Sterling Corporation (i.e. herself) by diverting thousands of dollars of company money into gifts for the florist.

Perelman revealed in his eulogy at her funeral that he had known about her cancer from the beginning and privately commissioned a vaccine in his efforts to cure her.

The pair first met in a Paris hotel lobby when both were still married: Perelman to Cohen, and Duff to Mike Medavoy.

Both Perelman and Duff wanted full custody and their prenuptial agreement did not address the subject of child support.

The court psychiatrist found Duff to be paranoid and narcissistic and Perelman to have serious anger management issues,[99] Perelman caught a great deal of flak for testifying that it cost about $3 a day to feed his daughter,[100] and both sides alleged physical abuse by the other party.

[101] The judge's sealed decision means the public will never know the exact results of the case,[98] but it's known that neither party actually won.

[102] Perelman met his fourth wife, actress Ellen Barkin, at a Vanity Fair Oscar after-party in 1999.

The press soundly mocked Perelman for his actions, the speed and timing of which suggested his real motivation was to avoid a clause in his prenuptial that would raise the amount in alimony he owed Barkin if he waited a few days longer.

Part of the divorce settlement required Perelman to invest several million dollars in a film production company Barkin and her brother George (an aspiring screenwriter) had started.

[102] Perelman is the owner of "Près Choisis" (now called "The Creeks"), a 40-room Mediterranean-style villa on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, Long Island.