Born Lenore Knaster[1] in Newark, New Jersey, she started to use the name "Lee" at the age of fourteen, often preferring to go by the simpler, if more enigmatic "E".

[5] Like many of her contemporaries, including Adrian Piper and Vito Acconci, Lozano began to pursue conceptual art projects starting in the mid-1960s.

[6] In April 1969, Lozano began her Grass and No-Grass pieces, in which she smoked and abstained (semi-successfully) from marijuana every day for several weeks at a time.

What began as a one-month experiment intended to improve communication with women wound up as a twenty-seven year hiatus from speaking or otherwise relating to them.

Art historian and critic Helen Molesworth has noted that these two conceptual works signaled Lozano's simultaneous rejection of capitalism and patriarchy.

In 1967, the artist made a list of her titles of paintings called ‘ALL VERBS: REAM, SPIN, VEER, SPAN, CROSS, RAM, PEEL, CHARGE, PITCH, VERGE, SWITCH, SHOOT, SLIDE, JUT, HACK, BREACH, STROKE, STOP’.

She continued to pursue private conceptual projects, including Masturbation Investigation and Dialogue Piece, but fell into relative obscurity until the late 1990s, when she was diagnosed with inoperable cervical cancer.