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. 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"

After not passing an audition for an earlier season,she advanced to the finals of the fifth season of the NBC reality television talent show Last Comic Standing and placed fourth. Schumer said in April 2011, "Last Comic was totally fun. I had a great time because there was no pressure on me; I had been doing stand-up around two years. I wasn't supposed to do well. So every time I advanced it was a happy surprise. I kept it honest on the show and it served me well