Advocate of capitalism, individualism, and enlightened self-interest, Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum. She graduated from the University of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), and went to the US (1926) where she was naturalized.

Her first writing was a mystery play, The Night of January 16th (1935), but later work shows her deep concern with the theme of extreme individualism. Her first novel, We, the Living (1936), depicts young young Russian individualists trapped and destroyed by totalitarian dictatorship.

Other work include: Anthem (1838), The Fountainhead (1943) her most famous novel and now a landmark of gay culture, Atlas Shrugged (1957), For the New Intellectual (1961), The Romantic Manifesto (1969), her "philosophy of literature".