Born in 1826 or 1827,[1] he succeeded John Keast Lord as naturalist of the Brighton Aquarium in 1872, and was for a time a director.
At the aquarium he instituted experiments on the migration of smelts, the habits of the herring, whitebait, crayfish, and other topics.
[2] Lee was himself an amateur collector of natural history specimens and microscopist.
He died, after some years of ill-health, at Renton House, Brixton, on 31 October 1888.
His book Sea Monsters Unmasked (1884) compared sightings of the Kraken to the squid.