Amy Schumer

Schumer was born on June 1, 1981, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, to Sandra Jane (née Jones) and Gordon David Schumer, who owned a baby furniture company. Schumer's father was born to a Jewish family from Ukraine. She is a second cousin, once removed, of U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Her mother is from a Protestant background and has deep New England roots, and converted to Judaism before her marriage. Schumer was raised Jewish and says she had to deal with antisemitism as a child. Her mother is of Puritan ancestry dating back to the colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 2017, as a guest on Finding Your Roots, Schumer learned that in 1704, three children from her ancestor Thomas Tarbell's family were captured at Groton, Massachusetts, in a French-Abenaki raid and taken to Montreal. The girl was ransomed by a French-Canadian family and ultimately joined a French Catholic convent; the two boys were each adopted by Mohawk families at Kahnawake and became thoroughly assimilated. They married Mohawk women and some of their descendants became chiefs. There are still Mohawk by the surname Tarbell in Kahnawake and Akwesasne, another village reserve on the St. Lawrence River founded by the brothers.

Through the success of her father's furniture company in Manhattan, Schumer's household was wealthy during her early years. When she was nine years old, her father's business failed and he went bankrupt, and either then or when she was 12 (sources differ), her father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Some time afterward, her parents divorced.

Schumer moved to Long Island with her mother, Schumer lived in Rockville Centre, New York, and attended South Side High School. She was voted both "Class Clown" and "Teacher's Worst Nightmare" upon graduation in 1999.

She attended the Hebrew school of the Central Synagogue of Nassau County, a Reform synagogue in Rockville Centre, where her mother served on the school's board.

After graduating from high school, Schumer attended Towson University in Towson, Maryland, where she graduated with a degree in theater in 2003. After graduating from college, she returned to New York City, where she studied at the William Esper Studio for two years and worked as a bartender and a waitress. She also lived in Santa Barbara, California with her boyfriend, who she characterized as abusive, where she worked as a pedicab driver. She has a younger sister, Kim Caramele, who is a comedy writer and a producer, and a half-brother, Jason Stein, who is a musician in Chicago, Illinois.