Leonard Norman Cohen was born on the 21st September 1934, in Westmount, Quebec, Canada, and was a musician, singer and songwriter as well as a novelist, poet and painter. Leonard Cohen was widely recognized for his poetry and songs, which revolve around politics, isolation, religion, sexuality, humanity as well as personal relationships, including among plenty of others “Let Us Compare Mythologies” and “Book of Longing” poetry books, as well as “Songs from a Room” (1969), “Songs of Love and Hate” (1971), “I’m Your Man” (1988), “The Future” (1992) “You Want It Darker” (2016) studio albums. He passed away in 2016.
Have you ever wondered how much wealth this legendary musician and poet accumulated for life? How rich Leonard Cohen was? It is estimated by authoritative sources that the total amount of Leonard Cohen’s net worth, as of early 2017, would be around $40 million, acquired through his writing as well as music careers, which were active between 1956 and his death.
Leonard Cohen Net Worth $40 million
Leonard was born into the middle-class family of Marsha Klonitsky and Nathan Cohen, an owner of the clothing store, and besides Canadian, was of Jewish, Lithuanian and Polish ancestry. After attending Roslyn Elementary School, he enrolled at Herzliah High School but later transferred to Westmount High School. During his teenage years, Cohen became deeply interested in poetry as well as music and performing, and founded his own country-folk band Buckskin Boys. After matriculating from high school, he enrolled at McGill University from which he graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1955. However, Cohen continued his education and obtained an undergraduate degree from the McGill Faculty of Law, and later enrolled at Columbia University School of General Studies in New York, USA. During his college years he won the Chester MacNaghten Literary Competition, and also began publishing his poems. The latter venture provided the modest basis for Leonard Cohen’s net worth.
In 1956, Cohen published his first book of poetry – “Let Us Compare Mythologies”. In the following year, he transferred to Montreal, Canada, where he began working on his new book of poetry named “The Spice-Box of Earth” released in 1961, which helped him to gain wider recognition. Through the rest of the 1960s, Cohen extensively worked on his poetry which resulted in publishing three more novels and poetry books, all being commercially successful. These achievements dramatically increased Leonard Cohen’s net worth.
Struggling to sustain momentum, in 1967 Cohen relocated to the US in order to pursue a music career, and in December that year he released his debut studio album “Songs of Leonard Cohen”, featuring what later became the hit single “Suzanne”. The album’s solid commercial success was followed by another studio album – “Songs from a Room” – which was warmly received by the critics and was a huge commercial success too. These accomplishments contributed to the total size of Leonard Cohen’s wealth by a large margin.
In his music career, Leonard Cohen released 14 studio albums and eight live albums featuring 44 hit singles including, apart from those already mentioned, “New Skin for the Old Ceremony” (1974) and “Hallelujah” (1984). In 1991, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, while in 2008 he became a member of Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. For his great contribution to music, poetry and Canadian culture in general, Leonard Cohen was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991, Companion of the Order of Canada in 2003, as well as a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2008.
When it comes to his personal life, through the 1960s Cohen was romantically involved with Marianne Ihlen, while in the 1970s he was dating an artist, Suzanne Elrod; although they never married, before splitting in 1979, they welcomed a son and a daughter. During the 1980s, Leonard was in a relationship with a French photographer Dominique Issermann, while in the 1990s he was romantically connected to actress Rebecca De Mornay.
Leonard Cohen was diagnosed with cancer, and he passed away at the age of 82 in his home in Los Angeles, California, on the 7th November 2016.
