Herbert Retzlaff was born in Königsberg, Germany (which is now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1903. During World War I, his family was evacuated to Berlin. He attended the University of Munich for three years. Inflation in post-World War I Germany drove him to seek employment abroad, ultimately landing him in Portland, Oregon, in 1924, where a fellow German American offered him a job at a gas company. In 1932, he and Lucile N. Martin were married. During the Depression, Retzlaff studied accounting at the Oregon Institute of Technology and became a CPA in 1933. In 1939, he began working as an accountant for Fred Meyer Inc. In 1955, he became a vice president of Fred Meyer Inc., and he retired in 1972. Lucy N. Martin died in 1978, and in 1980, Retzlaff and Helen E. Amacher were married. He was a patron of the Portland Opera, and established the Herbert Retzlaff Chair of Management Accounting endowment at Portland State University in 1986. He died in 1999.