Kay was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1934[2][3] to a third-grade teacher mother, Herma Lee Crawford, and an Army chaplain father, Charles Esdorn Hill.
[3][4] She studied English at Southern Methodist University and graduated magna cum laude in 1956.
After law school, she clerked for one year for Justice Roger Traynor of the California Supreme Court.
[8] Along with Robert Levy, she was co-reporter of the committee that prepared the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act.
"[14] Berkeley established the Herma Hill Kay Memorial Lecture series; the inaugural speaker was U.S. Supreme Court Justice (and friend of Kay's) Ruth Bader Ginsburg.