Neil Mallon Pierce Bush (born January 22, 1955) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the fourth of six children of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush (Barbara Lane Pierce). His five siblings are George Walker Bush, the former President of the United States; Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida;Robin Bush, who died of leukemia in 1953 at the age of four; Marvin; and Dorothy. Bush is currently a businessman based in Texas.
 
Bush was born in Midland, Texas. He was named after a good friend of the family, Henry Neil Mallon, chairman of Dresser Industries, George H. W. Bush's employer. As a child Bush spent some summers and holidays at his family's estate in Maine, the Bush Compound.

At age 11, he entered the exclusive St. Albans School in Washington, DC. He struggled through school; a counselor told his mother that it was doubtful the boy had the potential to graduate. He was later diagnosed as having dyslexia, and his mother spent much time coaching him through his learning disability. Eventually his grades improved and he graduated from St. Albans in 1973.
After St. Albans, Bush attended Tulane University, where he earned an economics degree in 1977. He earned an MBA in 1979
 
Neil Bush is the Chairman of Points of Light; an international nonprofit that works to increase volunteerism in the world. Points of Light has approximately 250 affiliates in 22 countries and partnerships with thousands of nonprofits and companies dedicated to volunteer service around the world. In 2012, Points of Light mobilized 4 million volunteers in 30 million hours of service worth $635 million.
 
Neil Bush was a member of the board of directors of Denver-based Silverado Savings and Loan during the 1980s' larger Savings and Loan crisis. As his father, George H.W. Bush, was Vice President of the United States, his role in Silverado's failure was a focal point of publicity. According to a piece in Salon, Silverado's collapse cost taxpayers $1.3 billion.

The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado's failure and determined that Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." Although Bush was notindicted on criminal charges, a civil action was brought against him and the other Silverado directors by theFederal Deposit Insurance Corporation; it was eventually settled out of court, with Bush paying $50,000 as part of the settlement.

A friend who also donated funds to the Republican set up a fund to help defer costs Neil incurred in his S&L legal defense.
 
In 1999, Bush co-founded Ignite! Learning, an educational software corporation. Bush has said he started Austin-based Ignite! Learning because of his learning difficulties in middle school and those of his son, Pierce. The software uses multiple intelligence methods to provide varying types of content to appeal to multiple learning styles.

To fund Ignite!, Bush raised $23 million from U.S. investors, including his parents, as well as businessmen from Taiwan, Japan, Kuwait, the British Virgin Islands and the United Arab Emirates, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Documented investors include Russian billionaire expatriate Boris Berezovsky, Berezovsky's partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, Kuwaiti company head Mohammed Al Saddah, and Chinese computer executive Winston Wong.

In 2002, Neil Bush commended his brother, George, for his efforts on education as President, but he questioned the emphasis on constant testing to keep federal aid coming to public schools: “I share the concerns of many that if our system is driven around assessments, pencil-and-paper tests that test a kid's ability to memorize stuff, I would say that reliance threatens to institutionalize bad teaching practices.”

As of October 2006, over 13 U.S. school districts (out of over 14,000 school districts nation-wide ) have used federal funds made available through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 in order to buy Ignite's products at $3,800 apiece.

A December 2003 Style section article in the Washington Post reported that Bush's salary from Ignite! was $180,000 per year.

Bush's relationship with the controversial oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a political enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin currently under indictment for fraudin Russia and an applicant for asylum in the United Kingdom,^[11] has been noted in the media. Berezovsky has been an investor in Bush's Ignite! program since at least 2003.^[12] Bush met with Berezovsky in Latvia. The meeting caused tension between that country and Russia due to Berezovsky's fugitive status. Bush was also seen in Berezovsky's box at an Arsenal's Emirates Stadium for a game in 2006, which prompted some stateside criticism. There has also been speculation in the English language Moscow Times that the relationship may cause tension in U.S.-Russian bilateral relations, "especially since Putin has taken pains to build a personal relationship with the U.S. president.
 
In July 1999, Bush made at least $798,000 on three stock trades in a single day of a company where he had been employed as a consultant. The company, Kopin Corporation of Taunton, Massachusetts, announced on the same day good news about a new Asian client that sent its stock value soaring. Bush stated that he had no inside knowledge and that his financial advisor had recommended the trades. He said, "any increase in the price of the stock on that day was purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper information."

When asked in January 2004 about the stock trades, Bush contrasted the capital gains he reported in 1999 and 2000 with the capital losses on Kopin stock he reported ($287,722 in all) in 2001. In 2001 Kopin joined a broad decline in high-tech stock valuations.
 
Bush and his former wife for 23 years, Sharon Smith, are the parents of three children, who are Lauren, Ashley Bush, and Pierce Bush. The couple divorced in April 2003 and Neil Bush married Maria Andrews in 2004.

Bush's divorce deposition gained public attention when he admitted to several sexual encounters in Thailand and Hong Kong. Among other divorce testimony aired in the press, Bush's friend John Spalding announced that Sharon had extracted hair samples from her estranged husband in order to place a voodoocurse on him. Sharon Bush later confirmed the forcible hair removal, but she stated that she took the hair to be tested for evidence of drug use. At various times, she publicly spoke of her fear of retribution by Bush, or by the Bush family.

Bush remarried in Houston, Texas, on March 6, 2004, to Maria Andrews. Andrews spent time volunteering with charitable organizations with Bush's mother, Barbara. Robert Andrews, Andrews' ex-husband, sued Sharon Bush in September 2003 for defamation after she alleged that Neil Bush was the father of Andrews' two-year-old son