[2] Her great-grandfather, Mah Bing Kee, was a Chinese labourer who immigrated to California in 1861 to work in the gold fields, then to Nanaimo, British Columbia, in 1878.

[3][4] Her father ran a communist bookstore on Hastings Street in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside from the 1960s to 1980s; she wrote and directed the short film Comrade Dad about the store.

[9] In 2018, SUM Gallery, run by Vancouver's Queer Arts Festival, featured her work in its debut exhibition, Karin Lee: QueerSUM 心.

[2] A review in Canadian Art noted Lee's aim to "normalize the non-linear narratives in the queer and feminist Chinese community and to propose how those lived experiences are still relevant today at the intersection of race, gender and sexuality.

"[2] In 2019, it was reported that Lee was working on a documentary about Velma Demerson, a white Canadian woman who was jailed for being in a relationship with a Chinese immigrant.