Random House was founded in 1925 when Bennett Self and Donald Klopf purchased literary reprints from Horace Liveright, the Modern Library. In 1927, in order to expand its publishing scope, it began to use the publishing trademark Random House. Since its establishment, it has been considered an internationally renowned literary publisher, and its published books have won numerous literary awards, including the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize.

In fiscal year 2000, Random House had sales of US$2.55 billion and profits of US$257.2 million.

In 1998, Random House was merged by Bertelsmann and Bantam Group to form the new Random House, thus becoming the world's largest English-language commercial book publishing group.

Random House currently has ten branches or groups.