Augusto Foà was born in Turin in 1877 to a Piedmontese family of Jewish origin.

An aficionado of literature, when he had finished his studies, he worked as a proofreader for UTET. In the evenings he would study languages and meet with a small group of literary friends. It was thus that he started to translate novels to published as newspaper supplements. This work inspired the idea to found Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale following the example of the emerging English agencies. The year was 1898.

In 1900, he moved to Milan to work for a company that operated telephone networks so that he could guarantee some moderate financial security while dedicating all his spare time to Ali. Foà purchased rights abroad, personally translated texts from German, English and French and sold them to newspapers and magazines.

He also published some works of his own: a book of short stories published in 1901 under the name: Dal Mare: novelle e bozzetti and a series of German literature studies published in 1904.

In the following years Augusto Foà promoted another Ali initiative which was no less innovative but ultimately less successful: the foundation of a film production house which, despite the name, Fortuna Film, went bankrupt after making its first film, I Cancelli dell'Eden.

An independent and determined character, in 1914 he married a girl who was not from the Jewish community, Emma Agnelli and in 1915 the couple's only child, Luciano, was born.

A few years later, in 1918, Augusto decided to expand Ali's work, by representing and selling the rights of authors such as P. G. Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley and Georges Simenon (for whom he held a great passion) whose works would be published in volumes and supplements.

After returning to Turin in 1923 to take over the management of a new telephone company, he moved permanently to Milan in 1930.

In 1933, his son Luciano joined Ali and became progressively involved in the agency's development which was interrupted abruptly by the outbreak of war.

In 1942, following the bombardments, the Foàs left Milan for Ivrea, where they worked with Adriano Olivetti on a plan for a new publishing house, Nuova Editrice Ivrea, and from there in 1943 they fled to Switzerland where they spent a year in a labour camp before obtaining supervised freedom. Only his wife Emma, who was not affected by racial laws, remained in Italy, not far from the Swiss border, at Viggiù.

After the war, Augusto, exhausted by the events, died unexpectedly during a holiday in Merano in 1948.