OnlyFans Owner Leonid Radvinsky Dies at 43

Leonid Radvinsky Courtesy

Leonid Radvinsky, owner of the adult content platform OnlyFans, has died. He was 43 years of age.

“Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer. His family have requested privacy at this difficult time,” OnlyFans said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday after Radvinsky’s death on March 20.

Born in the Ukraine, he grew up in Chicago and graduated with an economics degree from Northwestern University. With a specialty in open source software development, Radvinsky bought Fenix International Limited, the company that owns and runs OnlyFans, in 2018.

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OnlyFans was launched in 2016, the same year as TikTok, and started out by connecting models directly with fans to sell them photos and videos. Where pornography had mostly been viewed for free on online sites, OnlyFans developed a subscription-based model for creators with their own OnlyFans accounts, with most being sex workers. In 2021, OnlyFans banned sexually explicit video content on its site as it looked to bring on outside investors and responded to requests from banking partners and payment providers, including major credit card suppliers.

After the deal with Fenix International, Radvinsky became a director and the majority shareholder of the company. The audience for OnlyFans has risen to around 300 million users.

Radvinsky, who was a billionaire through his ownership of OnlyFans, was also an investor in other business ventures. Since 2024, his shares in Fenix International had been held in the LR Fenix Trust.