Based in California for most of her career, Steel has produced several books a year, often juggling up to five projects at once. Despite "a resounding lack of critical acclaim" (Publishers Weekly), all her novels have been bestsellers, including those issued in hardback. Her formula is fairly consistent, often involving rich families facing a crisis, threatened by dark elements such as prison, fraud, blackmail and suicide. Steel has also published children\'s fiction and poetry, as well as raising funds for the treatment of mental disorders. Her books have been translated into 43 languages, with 22 adapted for television, including two that have received Golden Globe nominations.\n', '

Steel was born Danielle Fernande Dominique Schuelein-Steel in New York City to a German father and a Portuguese mother. Her father, John Schulein-Steel, was a German-Jewish immigrant and a descendant of owners of Löwenbräu beer. Her mother, Norma da Camera Stone dos Reis, was the daughter of a Portuguese diplomat. She spent much of her childhood in France, where from an early age she was included in her parents\' dinner parties, giving her an opportunity to observe the habits and lives of the wealthy and famous. Her parents divorced when she was eight, and she was raised primarily by her father, rarely seeing her mother.\n', '

Steel started writing stories as a child, and by her late teens had begun writing poetry. Raised Catholic, she thought of becoming a nun during her early years. A 1963 graduate of the Lycée Français de New York, she studied literature design and fashion design, first at Parsons School of Design and then at New York University.\n', '

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