Damien Hirst was born on July 7, 1965, in Bristol, England, and raised in Leeds. He currently lives and works in London. He is one of the leading contemporary artists. He graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in 1989. While still a student, he held an independent exhibition with his classmates in 1988, and was discovered by Sir Charles Saatchi, founder of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi and owner of the Saatchi Gallery. His signature work is "Natural History," a series he began producing in 1991, in which he dismembered animal limbs and preserved them in formalin in glass cases. He won the Turner Prize in 1995 for "Mother and Child, Divided," in which he cut a cow and a calf in half lengthwise and preserved them in formalin. His work has influenced many media, and what appear to be homages to it appear in the film "The Cell" starring Jennifer Lopez and in Part 5 of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure."

In 2012, he was ranked number one in the list of richest artists published by the American lifestyle magazine "Complex."

He has also collaborated frequently with the fashion world, and in 2009 he created a surgical tool case for a charity auction with Louis Vuitton. In December 2012, he released a backpack in collaboration with The Row, the fashion brand created by the Olsen twins. One of Hirst's works is also displayed in the entrance hall of Prada's headquarters in Milan.