KEY POINTS:
Born - 24 September 1940
Education - Attended Christchurch Boys' High School and the University of Canterbury
1966 - Received a PhD in Economics at Australian National University
1966-1971 - Economist at the World Bank
1971-1982 - General Manager of Broadbank Corporation
1980 - Selected by the National Party as a candidate in the by-election in the East Coast Bays electorate. The seat went to Gary Knapp of the Social Credit Party.
1982-1986 - Managing director of the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority. During this time he had an affair with his secretary, Je Lan. He later separated from his wife Erica and married Je Lan.
1986-1988 - Managing director of the Trust Bank Group
1988-2002 - Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
2002 - Resigned from the Reserve Bank and became a list candidate for the National Party. Ranked fifth on the party list, Brash became spokesperson on finance.
October 2003 - Became leader of the National Party after rolling then leader Bill English in a caucus vote.
January 2004 - Delivered his first "Orewa Speech" at the Orewa Rotary Club
2005 - Emails leaked to media during the 2005 general election campaign show Brash received advice from the Business Roundtable and the Act Party during his National Party leadership bid.
National employed a private investigator to examine computers and laptops in Dr Brash's office but the inquiry was inconclusive.
Links with the ultra-conservative church group the Exclusive Brethren came to the public's attention during the election campaign.
Dr Brash originally distanced himself from the group but then admitted knowledge of the pamphlets.
December 2005 - New Zealand First leader Winston Peters tells Parliament he has "a telephone book" of confidential National Party emails.
September 2006 - Dr Brash faces allegations of an affair with married businesswoman Diane Forman.
15 November 2006 - Dr Brash was granted an interim injunction restraining anybody from putting his emails on a website, broadcasting them, handing them to someone else or revealing what is in them.
The injunction, issued by the High Court at Wellington, also requires anyone with the emails to hand them over to the court.
Several media outlets including the Herald sought to lift the injunction on the information contained in the emails.
21 November 2006 - Researcher Nicky Hager revealed he had written a book about National using leaked emails that were the focus of the injunction obtained by Dr Brash.
Hager said he had planned to launch the book, The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception, on Monday.
Hager claims his book did not come "from hacking into the parliamentary server or gaining access to Don Brash's computer system or something like that". Instead, he said the "extraordinary collection of inside papers" it came from disaffected people "in or close" to the National Party.
November 23 - Dr Brash resigns
