Barnes & Noble Founder and Chairman Leonard Riggio Has Died at 83: All About His Lasting Legacy

Barnes & Noble founder and chairman Leonard Riggio died on Tuesday, August 27,  at the age 83 after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's disease. He is best known for his brilliant business style and innovative ways of bringing books to people nationwide. 

A statement from Barnes & Nobles released after his passing honored his life’s work, stating, “His leadership spanned decades, during which he not only grew the company but also nurtured a culture of innovation and a love for reading.”   

Riggio is survived by his wife — and former editor — Louise Altavilla and their three kids, one of whom he shares with his ex-wife.  

 “My father lit up a room with his smile, drew people in with his wit and intellect, kept them close with his generosity and enormous heart,” his daughter, Stephanie Riggio-Bulger, said. “He worked tirelessly to leave the world a better place than he found it. May he rest comfortably knowing he succeeded.” 

Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya echoed similar thoughts by saying in the same statement, “In mourning the passing of Len Riggio, we also celebrate the life of a book-loving visionary who transformed the way America reads. Len was a giant, commercially and culturally. It is a privilege to benefit from all he contributed to our world.” 

Keep scrolling to learn more about how Riggio transformed the book-selling world.  

All about Leonard Riggio’s start in bookselling  

Riggio was born in 1941 in New York City and began his love for books at an early age. This led him to not only skip two grades before attending New York University. While there, he got a job as a stock boy at the campus bookstore to help pay for his tuition. Riggio eventually dropped out of college and instead opened SBX for Student Book Exchange, which was directly in competition with NYU.  

All of this would lead Riggio to discover his true passion: running a bookstore.  

Leonard Riggio and Barnes & Noble 

After running various campus bookstores for several years, Riggio decided he was ready for more. So, he took out a $1.2 million loan, walked to a struggling Fifth Avenue bookstore named Barnes & Noble, and bought it in 1971.  

From there, Riggio continued to work his way up the corporate ladder, eventually becoming chief executive at Barnes & Noble in 1993, a position he held until 2002.  

“Our bookstores were designed to be welcoming as opposed to intimidating,” Riggio said. “These weren’t elitist places. You could go in, get a cup of coffee, sit down and read a book for as long as you like, and use the restroom. These were innovations that we had that no one thought was possible.” 

Not everyone felt this way about his stores, though, and often criticized Barnes & Noble for monopolizing bookselling and putting smaller, independently run bookstores out of business.  

Riggio once responded to these claims by saying, “They would say, ‘You’re homogenizing bookselling,’ which was ridiculous because we were carrying 5,000 to 10,000 more titles than would be in a typical bookstore.”  

Another hurdle Riggio had to face in his time at the beloved bookstore chain was the rise of digital book sales and the loss of customers to online sites like Amazon. But he assured people that, “We’re great booksellers; we know how to do that. We weren’t constituted to be a technology company.” 

Riggio would remain with Barnes & Noble until 2016, which was the year he decided to retire at 75 but kept his 17.5 percent stock in the company until 2019, when it was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors.  

“I had never planned to be a businessperson for life,” Riggio said at the time. “I had always wanted to do something different after I’d been in business for a while and made some money.” 

The lasting legacy of Leonard Riggio  

Riggio will always be remembered for his revolutionary way of selling books and creating a safe space for readers and writers to go without feeling ashamed of who they are and what they live.  

 “We shaped New York bookselling as much as New York shaped us,” said Riggio.  

“I started four companies from scratch: Barnes & Noble, Barnes & Noble College, GameStop and MBS Textbook Exchange, and I like to think I've been a great entrepreneur, a good executive and a decent manager.” 

 May Leonard Riggio rest in peace.  

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