Penthouse (magazine)

Penthouse is a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione and published by Los Angeles–based Penthouse World Media, LLC. It combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictures of women that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore pornographic pictures of women.

Although Guccione was American, the magazine was founded in the United Kingdom in 1965, and first published simultaneously in the UK and the U.S. in March 1965. From September 1969, an "American Edition" was made available in the United States. Since 2016, Penthouse has been under the ownership of Penthouse World Media (formerly known as Penthouse Global Media Inc.), which filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Its assets were subsequently acquired in June of that same year by WGCZ Ltd., the owners of XVideos, when it won a bankruptcy auction bid. Later on, Penthouse Global Media was spun off from WGCZ and rebranded as Penthouse World Media.

The magazine's centerfold models are known as Penthouse "Pets" and customarily wear a distinctive necklace in the form of a stylized key which incorporates both the Mars and Venus symbols in its design.

The first "Pet of the Month" was Denise Johns, who was also pictured on the cover. The first American Pet of the Month was Evelyn Treacher, who was on the cover of the first American edition in September 1969. The first Pet of the Year in the United States was Stephanie McLean, pictured on the cover of the September 1971 issue.

In 2024, Penthouse started releasing physical copies of comic magazines.