Bern went to high school at Lycée Carnot in Paris, and he graduated from the École de management de Lyon in 1985. His parents, Melita Schlanger and Louis Bern, were born to Polish parents of Jewish families who had emigrated to Switzerland and France, before WW2. He came out in the magazine Têtu in October 2009 and in the documentary "Vie privée, vie publique" (by Mireille Dumas), which aired on France 3 on 6 November 2009.