Fira Benenson (14 April 1898 – 23 October 1977) was a Russian-born American fashion designer and dressmaker. After growing up in Baku and Saint Petersburg, her family left Russia at the end of World War I and relocated in London. Benenson grew up between London, Paris and New York City, immigrating to Manhattan in the late 1920s. Opening a dress shop, she gained a reputation as a designer and was hired by Bonwit Teller in 1934. When World War II prohibited participation in the Paris fashion industry, she and other American designers began creating their own fashion lines. Leaving Bonwit's in 1948, she operated her own company, designing into 1969 and inspiring a new generation of American designers. Early life Fira Benenson was born on 14 April 1898 in Baku, which at the time was located in the Russian Empire, as the middle daughter of Sophia Borisovna (née Goldberg, , 1862–1926) and Grigori Benenson (1860–1939) (), a Jewish financier and oil magnate. Her mother was born in Pinsk and her father was born in Minsk to a wealthy timber merchant and had begun his career managing his father's estates. In 1889, he moved with his wife and young son, Jacob (1885–?) to Baku, opening a rice processing plant, which was the first in the area and began exporting rice in the domestic market. Within a decade, he bought a kerosene plant and expanded his business interests into oil production. Grigory was one of the pioneer oil prospectors of the Baku fields and a chief stockholder in the Lena Gold Mining Partnership, as well as a director of the Russian and English Bank Limited of Saint Petersburg. Berenson was raised with her older sister Flora (1895–1984) and younger sister Manya on the top floor of the home built by Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky in Saint Petersburg and spent time on a country estate known as Redkino. Her father then bought a home on Nevsky Prospect, from which he operated his businesses as well and eventually installed a cinema in 1912. The following year, the business was moved to Sadovaya Street, to the building which now houses the St. Petersburg currency exchange. In 1914, while visiting in Germany, the family decided to relocate to London and moved there permanently in 1915. Grigory began investing in New York City in 1919, buying the City Investing Building. Berenson lived in Paris with her mother in