Yes—newer versions of Lightroom added built-in face recognition: Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC include a People/face-tagging feature. Community feedback notes that it works, but isn’t perfect.

For older Lightroom versions, there wasn’t a native plugin-based solution mentioned here. Common workarounds were to use another application for face detection and tagging, then let Lightroom read that metadata:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery: reported to write face tags into metadata in a way that plays well with Lightroom.
• Picasa: can also do face recognition and tagging, though users found its metadata handling less predictable.

So the practical answer is:

• If you’re on Lightroom 6/CC or later, use Lightroom’s built-in face recognition.
• If you’re on an older version, use an external tool such as Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa and sync metadata back to Lightroom.

As for Adobe’s plans, the provided answers only confirm that face recognition was heavily requested and later became a built-in Lightroom feature.