Born in Lochgelly, in Fife, to Euphemia Greig and James Lee, a miner who held the post of fire and safety officer,[2] and later a hotelier.

[4] Her grandfather Michael Lee, born in 1850 to Irish Catholic parents, was a friend of Keir Hardie, a disputes secretary of the miners' union and founder of the Fifeshire ILP federation.

Lee was adopted as the ILP candidate for the North Lanarkshire constituency, which she won at a 1929 by-election, becoming the youngest woman[3] member of the House of Commons.

[3] Lee's first speech was an attack on the budget proposals of Winston Churchill (accusing him "of 'cant, corruption, and incompetence', her gestures more fitting to the storming of platforms than the measured tones expected from a young MP in the house")[8] that met even with his approval, with him offering his congratulations after their exchange in the Commons.

She was totally opposed to Ramsay MacDonald's decision to form a coalition National Government, and in the 1931 general election lost her seat in parliament to Unionist candidate William Anstruther-Gray.

In her private life at the time she had formed a close relationship with fellow Labour MP Edward Frank Wise, a married man who considered divorcing his wife for Lee, but who did not do so in the end.

Wise died in 1933 and the following year Lee married the left-wing Welsh Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, with whom she remained until his death in 1960.

Her biography suggests that she to some extent suppressed her own career after marriage, which 'was the more remarkable precisely because as a woman in politics she had always laid claim to a 'male' life, public, itinerant and unencumbered by family responsibilities'.

[11] She travelled in Aragon and Barcelona with George Orwell and the teenage grandson of her Commons sponsor, Robert Smillie, MP, while reporting for New Leader and they were all caught up in some violent incidents.

[12] Lee attended a torchlit parade of the British Battalion of the International Brigades volunteers at Modejar with Clement Attlee and others in the Labour Party, during the war.

[13] She was again unsuccessful in seeking re-election as an "Independent Labour" candidate in a 1943 by-election at Bristol Central, being defeated by the Conservative Lady Apsley and opposed by the ILP.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson was an enthusiastic supporter because he envisioned The Open University as a major marker in the Labour Party's commitment to modernising British society.

The planned utilisation of television and radio to broadcast its courses was also supposed to link The Open University to the technological revolution underway, which Wilson saw as a major ally of his modernisation schemes.

However, from the start, Lee encountered widespread scepticism and even opposition from within and without the Labour Party, including senior officials in the DES; her departmental boss, Anthony Crosland; the Treasury; Ministerial colleagues, such as Richard Crossman; and commercial broadcasters.

The Association claimed Adam Smith is synonymous with "exploitation and greed" and stated "Jennie Lee would be an excellent role model for the students because of the courage and conviction she showed in achieving the aims she believed passionately in".

In the village of Overtown, near Wishaw, North Lanarkshire, a new housing development was built and a street was named after her, Jennie Lee Drive.