Born in Westchester, New York, he was the son of Pierre Lorillard III (1796–1867) and Catherine Griswold. In 1760, his great-grandfather, and namesake, founded P. Lorillard and Company in New York City to process tobacco, cigars, and snuff. Today, Lorillard Tobacco Company is the oldest tobacco company in the U.S. Pierre Lorillard married Emily Taylor (b. January 21, 1841) in 1858 with whom he had four children; she was the daughter of Isaac Ebenezer Taylor (b. 1815) and Eliza Mary Mollan Taylor (d. 1867). He is the step-grandfather of the artist Peter Hill Beard.
In the early 1880s, Lorillard helped make Newport, Rhode Island a yachting center with his schooner Vesta and a steam yacht Radha. He owned a summer estate in Newport called “The Breakers”, which he sold to Cornelius Vanderbilt II in 1882 in order to use his newly developed estate, the Tuxedo Club, at what became known as Tuxedo Park in Orange County, New York. Lorillard had inherited 13,000 acres (53 km²) around Tuxedo Lake, which he developed in conjunction with William Waldorf Astor and other wealthy associates into a luxury retreat. Lorillard hired famed architect Bruce Price to design his clubhouse and the many “cottages” of the era along with landscape architect Arthur P. Kroll, in 1929. Lorillard was also a member of the Jekyll Island Club, also known as The Millionaires Club.
While it has been reported that Lorillard’s son, Griswold Lorillard, introduced the then-unnamed tuxedo to the United States in 1886 at the Tuxedo Club’s Autumn Ball, this is now known to be incorrect. While Griswold and his friends did create a stir by wearing unorthodox clothing, their jackets were closer to tailcoats without tails, or what would now be called a mess jacket.
