Lorraine Hansberry was born at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago on May 19, 1930. She was the youngest of Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry's four children. Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago.

Lorraine Hansberry was an American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

Hansberry obtained a divorce from Nemiroff on March 10, 1964 in Juarez, Mexico, on grounds of incompatability. In this divorce it was the wife who was divided up: Nemiroff got the writer; Secules the woman.