Hugh Hefner's Widow Crystal Warns Explicit Photos in Playboy Mogul's Scrapbooks May Include Underage Girls

Nearly a decade after Hugh Hefner’s death, a new battle is unfolding over the late Playboy founder’s legacy — and it centers on thousands of deeply personal scrapbooks filled with explicit photographs, diary entries and intimate details about women who never expected their images to resurface.

Crystal Hefner, his third wife and widow, has filed regulatory complaints with the attorney generals of California and Illinois, alleging that the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation is mishandling and potentially preparing to release approximately 3,000 personal scrapbooks that contain nude photographs and private writings. At a February 17 press conference alongside her attorney Gloria Allred, she warned that the materials pose serious privacy and consent concerns — particularly in an era of artificial intelligence and digital manipulation.

“The materials span decades, beginning in the 1960s, and may include images of girls who were underage at the time and could not consent to how their images would be retained or controlled,” Crystal said in a prepared statement. “They may also contain images of women who did not consent to their images being taken in the first place.”

According to Allred, the scrapbooks include nude images as well as diary entries documenting “highly personal information regarding his sexual exploits, including names of women he slept with, notes describing the s-- acts they performed, and in some instances, even information tracking women's menstrual cycles.”

Crystal, 39, said she did not consent to having her own intimate images stored or potentially digitized by the foundation. She also expressed concern that some images may have been taken while women were intoxicated and unable to give informed consent.

“They contain intimate material involving women who are now mothers, grandmothers, professionals, and private citizens who have spent decades building their lives with no idea these images were still being hoarded,” she said. “This is not historical documentation. This is the cataloging and objectification of women's most private details.”

She added that she is “deeply worried about these images getting out,” citing “artificial intelligence, deepfakes, digital scanning, online marketplaces and data breaches” as irreversible risks.

Crystal revealed she was removed from her leadership role at the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation after raising concerns about consent and security surrounding the materials.

“Unlike me, the people who have custody of these scrapbooks do not have their own naked images in these books,” she said. “They are not personally exposed, and they are not personally at risk. The burden and the danger fall entirely on us, the women in these photos.”

Hugh, who died in 2017 at age 91, built Playboy into a cultural empire that championed sexual liberation while drawing longstanding criticism for misogyny and exploitation. In recent years, his legacy has been further scrutinized following the A&E docuseries Secrets of Playboy, which detailed allegations of abuse and coercion from women in his orbit.

Now, his personal archive — once seen as a monument to a publishing titan — has become the focal point of a debate over privacy, consent and who controls the narrative of Playboy’s past.