Robert was born in 1967. His mother was Barbara Ingrid Beitz, an ethnic German whose parents were declared as "Righteous among the Nations" for providing refuge and risking their lives to save Jews during World World War World War II His father was the Jewish American media magnate William Ziff Junior. (d 2006), who had built the Ziff-Davis magazine empire that included titles such as Popular Aviation, Personal Computer Magazine, and Carolina and Driver.
Ziff studied undergraduate electrical and computer engineering at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude. He then attended Cornell Law School, where he graduated first in his class and was editor of the Cornell Law Review.
After law school, Ziff clerked for Chief Judge Monroe G. McKay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Salt Lake City, Utah and later served as vice president of strategic planning at Ziff Communications Company. Instead, they formed New York City-based Ziff Brothers Investments, investing their inheritances broadly across equities, debt, real estate, commodities, private equity and hedge funds. They also provided seed money to fund manager Daniel Och in exchange for a 10% stake in Och-Ziff Capital Management which went public in 2007.
In 1998, Robert donated $2 million to the Harvard University men"s hockey program
In 2008, he established the Ziff Professorship of Law at Cornell Law School. He also made headlines in 2011 for his financial contributions to Republican legislators supportive of gay marriage.
