Eugene Kohn was born on 12 December 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was married to Barbara Shattuck, Barbara Schwartz and Diane Barnes. He died on 9 March 2023 in Montecito, California, USA.
At the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, he took classes from mid-century architects Louis Kahn and Paul Rudolph, and received a bachelor's degree. After three years in the Navy, he completed a master's degree at Penn and worked at Philadelphia firms before moving to New York.