Amy Schumer was born on June 1, 1981 in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, to Sandra (née Jones) and Gordon Schumer, who owned a baby furniture company. She has a younger sister, Kimberly, who is a comedy writer and a producer, and a brother, Jason Stein, who is a musician in Chicago, Illinois. Her father is second cousin to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer's father is Jewish and her mother is from a Protestant background. Schumer was raised Jewish.


Through the success of her father's furniture company in Manhattan, Schumer began life in a wealthy family. But at age nine, her family went bankrupt, and her father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; her parents divorced three years later.[10] Moving to Long Island, she attended South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York and was voted both "Class Clown" and "Teacher's Worst Nightmare" upon graduation in 1999. Schumer moved to Baltimore, Maryland after high school where she attended Towson University, graduating with a degree in theater in 2003. She returned to New York City after college, where she studied at the William Esper Studio for two years and worked as a bartender and a waitress

Schumer portrayed a young woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the off-Broadway black comedy Keeping Abreast. She started doing Stand-Up Comedy on June 1, 2004, when she first performed at Gotham Comedy Club.In 2007, she recorded a Live at Gotham episode for Comedy Central before appearing on Last Comic Standing; she said in August 2012 that she thought of the episode as her "big break


Schumer co-starred in the Comedy Central reality show Reality Bites Back in 2008. In 2009, she appeared in an advertising campaign for Butterfinger. Schumer was a recurring guest on Fox News late-night program Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld between 2007 and 2012. Her first Comedy Central Presents special aired on April 2, 2010. She served as a co-host of A Different Spin with Mark Hoppus (later titled Hoppus on Music) in 2011. She has also written for Cosmopolitan.[21]

Schumer did an episode of WTF with Marc Maron podcast on March 3, 2011, in which she discusses her early life in more detail.[24] Schumer has appeared in roles on the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, the Adult Swim mockumentary series Delocated, and the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm and Girls.[25] She acted in three films in 2012: the independent comedy Price Check, the comedy-drama Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and the independent comedy Sleepwalk with Me. Schumer also appeared on The Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen in September 2011, and The Comedy Central Roast of Roseanne Barr in August 2012