Lorelei Lee debuted in sex industry at the age of 19,deriving her stage name from Marilyn Monroe's character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She graduated from San Francisco State University in 2008, and later pursued a master's degree in creative writing at New York University. She has been awarded a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts "youngARTS Scholarship". She is best known for her performances as a fetish and bondage model, particularly on pornographic site Kink.com, where she has also worked as a director. In 2006 she wrote the centerfold text for the Sara Thrustra's Ten Pictures and Two Pin-Ups calendar. Along with fellow Kink model and director Princess Donna, Lee was the subject of Brian Lilla's 2007 independent film A Tale of Two Bondage Models, which appeared at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2008 she appeared in the documentary 9to5 Days in Porn[12] and also toured nationally as part of the "Sex Workers' Art Show" with other prominent members of the kink and sex-positivity community. In 2009 Lee appeared in Graphic Sexual Horror, a documentary about Insex, a now-defunct bondage website. Later that year, she was the subject and lead actress of the short movie Lorelei Lee, directed by Simon Grudzen and Jesse Kerman and shown at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival; the film received multiple awards at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, including Best Directing, Best Original Score and Best Use of Social Issue/Political Genre. In 2010, Lee published an essay titled "I'm Leaving You" in Off the Set: Porn Stars and Their Partners, a book of documentary photography by Paul Sarkis that explores the off-screen romantic relationships of ten couples who perform in porn, and which features photos of Lorelei with her partner at the time. On May 2011 Variety announced the production of Cherry, an independent movie written by Lee alongside Stephen Elliott, directed by the same Elliott and starring James Franco, Heather Graham and Lili Taylor. Hustler Magazine ranked her eight in their 2011 list of the Top 10 Smartest Porn Stars