Author and creative writer Danielle Steel celebrates her birth date on Aug. 14, 1947, in New York, N.Y. Her dad was German and her mother was Portuguese. She spent much of her childhood in France exposed to the wealthy and famous. Her parents divorced when she was eight and she was raised by her dad, seldom seeing her mother.

Danielle was raised Catholic and considered being a nun. She wrote stories at an early age and was into writing poetry as a teen. She studied literature and fashion design at Parsons School of Design and New York University.

Her first novel, “Going Home,” was published in 1973. Danielle uses a 1946 Olympia typewriter which she paid $20 for to write her books on since the beginning of her career and still today. She only uses a computer for emails. She has written some 210 books published in 69 countries in 43 languages and has sold a billion copies of her novels. She also writes non-fiction, poetry and children’s books. Several of her books have been made into movies and every book is a bestseller.

What she cares about most are her children and then writing. Even though they are grown, her kids visit often and they all vacation together. She has nine children, five daughters and four sons and she has a mansion in San Francisco and a second home in Paris.

All her family loves dogs and she wrote a book in October 2013 about their dogs called “Pure Joy.”

We have 120 of her books.