[3] Sparks and Gardner had both worked at LA Weekly, although at separate times, and were active participants in the Art punk DIY scene in the Echo Park/Silver Lake area when they began writing music together.

[3] Sparks credited mutual friends at LA Weekly for connecting her to Gardner and stated that the publisher was a cultural hub of performance artists, writers, and musicians including Vaginal Davis and Jonathan Gold on staff at the time.

[8][9] In a 1993 article for Spin which featured L7 on the magazine's cover, Renée Crist described L7 as "four of the funniest, meanest, strongest, coolest, most pissed-off women I know" and as "wild, rambunctious, spontaneous" with a stage show that "is a wash of buddy love, crowd working, and acrobatics".

[12] Sparks's music has been featured in the films Natural Born Killers, Brokeback Mountain, Perks of Being a Wildflower and in the video games Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Rock Band 2.

[1][9][16] The documentary L7: Pretend We're Dead, directed by Sarah Price, features original footage and interviews with Donita Sparks and was released November 2016.

[18] Sparks continues to perform live shows with the original line up of L7 and co-wrote two new songs with Suzi Gardner: Dispatch from Mar-a-Lago, 2017 and I Came Back to Bitch, 2018 that were released as singles.

"[22] In March 2019, Sparks appeared as part a panel discussion along with Henry Rollins, Marky Ramone, and John Lydon following a screening for the Epix docuseries Punk.

[27] Sparks and L7 formed Rock for Choice with the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1991, staging numerous concerts benefiting pro-choice organizations featuring some of the biggest bands in the industry including Nirvana and Hole.