She served as the chief creative officer (CCO) of Walt Disney Animation Studios from 2018 to 2024, before stepping down to return to full-time filmmaking.

[8] After their divorce, Lee and her older sister Amy, who later became an English teacher, lived with their mother in East Providence, Rhode Island.

[7][8] Both Lee and her older sister graduated from East Providence High School and the University of New Hampshire.

[8] Lee earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1992[9][10] and relocated to New York City, where she worked as a graphic artist in publishing; she designed audiobooks for Random House.

[7][11] Her script for The Round Up was a quarter-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition in 2009 and was subsequently optioned by Appian Way Productions.

[11] In March 2011, Phil Johnston, a former classmate at Columbia, called Lee to ask her to join him at Disney Animation in Burbank to help him write Wreck-It Ralph.

[12] It was also the highest-earning film with a female director in terms of domestic earnings, until surpassed by Warner Bros.' Wonder Woman.

[17]: 7:10  At Columbia, Johnston recognized she was talented but insecure, and one day asked her to "promise ... that you'll leave it out of your work, just know that you're good enough and move on.

[20][21][22] In August 2014, Variety reported that Lee's next project after Frozen would be an adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time.

[34] They were married in August 2021 by actor and mutual friend Jonathan Groff who had introduced them,[35] and live in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California with Lee's daughter.