[10] In 1963, Hershman graduated with a bachelor's degree in Education, Museum Administration and Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

[9] One aspect of Hershman's master's thesis involved writing art criticism under three pseudonyms: Prudence Juris, Herbert Goode and Gay Abandon.

[15] From 1993 to 2004, Hershman Leeson taught in the Art Studio program at the University of California, Davis, where she is currently a professor emerita.

[18][19] Hershman Leeson's earlier works drew interest from themes within science fiction and assemblages of the human body and sexuality.

[10] Her 1968 piece Breathing Machine II is composed of a wax face with a wig and butterflies contained in a wood and plexiglass display, expressing the a dichotomy of life and entrapment within the female body.

Shaped by her experiences, Leeson's early works were political in nature and characterized as being closer inspections of femininity and gender roles.

Towards the end, the 'original' Roberta withdrew from her character leaving the three 'clones' to continue her work, until they were retired in a performance at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, Italy in 1978, during an exorcism at the grave of Lucrezia Borgia.

[23] Described as the first interactive laser artdisk art project,[3] Hershman Leeson's 1983 work Lorna tells the story of an agoraphobic woman who never left her one-room apartment.

Viewers were invited to liberate Lorna from her fears, using remote control units, and have the option of directing her life into several possible plots and endings.

[25] The project is said to be inspired by Thomas Edison's kinetograph, a device where a film is displayed on loop and an individual is allowed to view it through a peephole.

[26] The project, Room of One’s Own, allows the viewer to peer inside of a box through a small periscopic device and see a bed, telephone, chair, television, and some clothes on the floor.

In 2013 the SFMOMA presented Lynn Hershman Leeson: The Agent Ruby Files,[3] a digital and analog presentation which reinterpreted dialogues drawn from the decade-long archive of text files of Agent Ruby's conversations with online users to reflect on technologies, recurrent themes, and patterns of audience engagement.

And how you can defeat that.A 1990 documentary, Desire Inc. features a series of seductive television ads in which a sexy woman asked for viewers to call her.

If I had done the Roberta thing ten years later, I would have faced the same problems.In 2017, Leeson released Tania Libre, composed of the therapy sessions between Cuban-artist and activist Tanya Bruguera and Dr. Frank M. Ochberg revolving around the subjects of political surveillance, past trauma and the aftermath of imprisonment in Havana after her prior advocating for freedom of expression.

[33] A 2007 retrospective at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, Autonomous Agents, featured a comprehensive range of the artist's work—from the Roberta Breitmore series (1974–78) to videos from the 1980s and interactive installations that use the Internet and artificial intelligence software.

The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I, was published by The University of California Press in 2005 on the occasion of another retrospective at the Henry Gallery in Seattle.

In 2014 The ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany held "Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar", a retrospective of work.

[36] In 2023, Leeson received honorary awards from Creative Capital The Mill Valley Film Festival, The Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco).

raises awareness for the fact that the art world is a male-dominated realm and explores the many influential works of female artists over the decades.

[72] Lynn Hershman Leeson has been awarded a special mention from the Jury for her participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – The Milk of Dreams.

The award was presented with the following motivation: “for indexing the cybernetic concerns that run through the exhibitions in an illuminating and powerful way that also includes visionary moments of her early practice that foresaw the influence of technology in our everyday lives.”[15] Hershman Leeson is based in San Francisco, California.