Lea was the longtime publisher of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, and a United States Army veteran of World War I.

In 1919 he led an unauthorized and unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the recently exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II.

He was born into a political family after Reconstruction and named for a paternal great-grandfather, Luke Lea, who was a two-term Congressman from Tennessee in the 1830s.

Initially an ardent supporter of Democrat Andrew Jackson, the elder Lea later became a member of the Whig Party.

Lea was the manager of the "Iron Men" of the 1899 Sewanee Tigers football team, and was credited with organizing their schedule of games.

He was an enthusiastic supporter of most of the progressive policies of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, a fellow native of the South.

Socially progressive but fiscally conservative, Lea actively supported lowering tariffs, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the regulation of major corporations, and the breaking up of trusts.

[3] In 1913, Lea began his most ambitious undertaking in the Senate when he attempted to launch a federal investigation of the railroads and political corruption in Tennessee.

Lea contended for the 1916 Democratic nomination for the seat but was defeated by Kenneth McKellar, a colleague of Memphis political "boss" E. H. Crump.

In January 1919, Lea and a group of three officers and three sergeants from his unit, the 114th Field Artillery, traveled to Kasteel Amerongen in the Netherlands in a failed attempt to seize the recently exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II and bring him to the Paris Peace Conference for potential trial for war crimes.

[6] The Americans entered the Netherlands using false civilian passports travelling in two staff cars with weapons concealed under the seats.

In 1929 Governor Henry H. Horton nominated Lea for appointment to the Senate seat vacated by the death of Lawrence D. Tyson.

[10] The house, known as Washington Hall, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property to the Whitland Area Neighborhood.

The original land grant establishing Percy Warner Park was donated by Lea and his family to Nashville.

The book At Heaven's Gate by Southern writer Robert Penn Warren is said to be a roman à clef about the 1920s era and Caldwell & Company in the Nashville area, as are aspects of the novel A Summons to Memphis by the novelist Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor.

Author David Neil Drews released Iron Tigers in 2023--a historical novel inspired by the 1899 Sewanee football team.

The novel's Alfie Melville is significantly based on Luke Lea--the 1899 Sewanee team's manager and mastermind of their epic season.