As a teenager she listened to Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Carla Thomas, and Ike & Tina Turner.
[5] During her senior year at Hope High School, her stepfather retired from the Navy and she moved to Pomona, California with her family in 1964.
[3][6] After graduating from high school, Lennear enrolled in college and began fronting the Los Angeles-based soul group The Superbs.
[8] Nonetheless, Lennear recalled her time with the Turners fondly, telling The Providence Journal: Without Ike and Tina, I'd probably be 20 miles from stardom, not 20 feet....they taught me how to perform, how to work with other singers and musicians.
She sang back-up vocals on Joe Cocker's 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and live album, on Leon Russell and the Shelter People (1971), and on George Harrison's The Concert for Bangla Desh (1971).
[3][11] She had a bit part in the film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), playing the secretary who asks Clint Eastwood's character for his Social Security number.
[3] Lennear appeared in the Academy Award-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
[4][18][19] In 1969, Lennear dated Mick Jagger when Ike & Tina Turner were the opening act for the Rolling Stones on their American tour.
[21][22][23] NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray noted in 1981 that she was "yet to reply in song to either Mick or David.