The magazine began publication in 1985 in the United Kingdom under the name For Him and changed its title to FHM in 1994 when Emap Consumer Media bought the magazine, although the full For Him Magazine continues to be printed on the spine of each issue.

Circulation expanded to newsagents as a quarterly by the spring of 1987. After the emergence of James Brown's Loaded magazine (regarded as the blueprint for the lad's mag genre), For Him Magazine firmed up its editorial approach to compete with the expanding market and introduced a sports supplement. It then went monthly and changed its name to FHM. It subsequently dominated the men's market and began to expand locally.

FHM was sold as part of the publishing company sale, from EMAP to German company Bauer Media Group in February 2008.

Each of FHM's international editions publish yearly rankings for the sexiest women alive based on public voting through the magazine's website. Dates of magazine issues, winners, ages of winners at the time of selection, and pertinent comments are listed below for the UK edition.

FHM publishes in 26 territories, including Australia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States:

There is no printed edition of FHM published in the Americas. The magazine is only available online at www.fhmonline.com.

The French edition of FHM has been published since 1999 by 1633 Publishing.

The German edition of FHM is published by Mitte Editionen GmbH in Berlin.

The Hungarian edition of FHM was published by SanomaBudapest until December 2009.

The Lithuanian edition of FHM is published by Leidykla Lilita.