 Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian ("née" Blumberg), and a Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Upper Norwood, London.Lilian had been brought up as a Christian, but she was of partial Jewish ancestry—her paternal grandfather Ludwig Blumberg, a Jewish merchant originally from East Prussia, had married into the English upper-middle classes.He received his formal education at Alleyn's School, London.