He's been described as an "international money man of mystery".

Self-made billionaire Jeffrey Epstein has made the tumultuous journey from high school teacher, to Wall Street investment banker, to friend of Nobel prize-winning scientists and a US president, to disgraced sex offender.

And now, new sexual allegations against the notoriously private American tycoon have drawn into the spotlight a prominent member of the British royal family, a Harvard Law School professor and a 31-year-old woman said to have lived on the central coast of NSW.

Epstein, 61, was convicted in 2008 of soliciting girls for underage prostitution.

Three years earlier, the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl had reported to police that Epstein had paid the teenager $200 for an erotic massage at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

Within a year, prosecutors claimed to have identified 40 young women who may have been illegally procured by Epstein. Dozens of his alleged victims are reported to have settled with Epstein out of court.

The federal inquiry was eventually dropped after Epstein negotiated a deal with prosecutors. As part of that deal, he agreed to plead guilty to a relatively minor state charge, relating to soliciting paid sex with a minor, and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence.

His jail cell was a long way from his private Carribean island, nicknamed Little St Jeff's, where he had been living before his incarceration.

Born in 1953, Epstein was raised in middle-class Coney Island in the US and attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, before he started his career teaching calculus and physics at Dalton School, a private boys' school in New York City.

It was there that the father of one of his students put him in touch with the New York-based global investment bank Bear Stearns.

He left teaching for a career at Bear Stearns, where he became a derivatives specialist and eventually a partner in the firm, before striking out on his own in the 1980s.

The payback was swift, and soon Epstein's company, J. Epstein & Co, was reportedly managing the individual and family fortunes of clients with $US1 billion or more.

Along with new clients, he amassed a fleet of private aircraft and properties across the globe, including what is thought to be New York City's largest private house, and Little St Jeff's in the Virgin Islands.

He also befriended many powerful people, once counting former US president Bill Clinton, businessman Donald Trump and actor Kevin Spacey among his associates.

In 2002, Epstein flew Mr Clinton, Spacey and actor Chris Tucker to Africa in his private jet to promote the former president's anti-AIDS projects.

At the time, New York Magazine published a profile on him titled: "Jeffrey Epstein, International Moneyman of Mystery".

"He is this mysterious, Gatsbyesque figure," one prominent Wall Street worker told the magazine.

"He likes people to think that he is very rich, and he cultivates this air of aloofness. The whole thing is weird."

The magazine also reported at the time that Mr Trump had known Epstein for 15 years, and thought he was a "terrific guy".

"He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it - Jeffrey enjoys his social life," Mr Trump said.

Epstein, who never wears a suit, preferring monogrammed sweatsuits and jeans according to the New York Times, also invested millions of dollars in cutting-edge scientific research, including at Harvard University.

He counted among his friends Nobel prize-winning scientists, as well as British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is said to have introduced him to Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, and the royal's former wife, Sarah Ferguson.

Prince Andrew has now been named in a new civil case filed against Epstein in Florida last week.

The motion alleges that Epstein forced a then teenage girl, identified in the British media as 31-year-old Virginia Roberts, to have sexual relations with several men, including Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

Mr Dershowitz also served on Epstein's legal team during his previous court appearances, and is perhaps best known for representing O.J. Simpson.

Prince Andrew and Mr Dershowitz have denied the claims against them.

Ms Roberts is said to have moved to the central coast of NSW after marrying an Australian man she met in Thailand while attending a massage course in 2002. She is now the mother of three children and lives in the US.

"I was a paedophile's top girl, being trained up for a British prince," The Daily Mail quoted Ms Roberts as saying of her relationship with Epstein.

"I was totally under Jeffrey's spell. I was his personal sex slave."

She says she was paid £10,000 to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17.

Buckingham Palace on Saturday night issued a second denial in a strongly worded statement.

A palace spokesman said: "It is emphatically denied that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts.

"The allegations made are false and without any foundation."