Lee was born in Santa Monica, California,[2] in 1966, the daughter of Vicky Svitak and Wayne Waldroop,[5] who had been high-school sweethearts.

[5][10][11] In her youth, Lee learned how to feed her younger siblings frugally with a combination of food stamps and welfare payments, an experience that informed her future approach to cooking.

[17] QVC also selected Lee to launch its craft and home decorating categories on its networks in the U.K. and Germany.

[20] Each episode contains entertaining and arts and crafts elements, in which Lee decorates the table setting and kitchen in accordance with the theme of the meal that she just prepared.

[21] Lee's second Food Network series, Sandra's Money Saving Meals, began airing on May 10, 2009,[22] in response to the Great Recession.

[19] She has authored 27 books,[23] including Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade: Cool Kids Cooking (October 2006) and a memoir, Made From Scratch, which was released in November 2007.

[30][31][32][33] In early 2020, Lee began creating her "Top Shelf" video series for Today.com, showcasing new ways to make meals from products commonly found in pantries.

[4][34][35][36] An April 2020 New York Times article authored by Jessica Bennett called Lee "the queen of making something out of nothing".

[11] Amanda Hesser, in a 2003 review of Semi-Homemade Cooking in The New York Times, wrote that Lee's recipes, in their use of packaged ingredients, can end up costing more, having harder-to-find ingredients, taking longer to make, and tasting worse than equivalent recipes made from scratch.

Hesser also wrote that, in her cookbooks, Lee "encourages a dislike for cooking, and gives people an excuse for feeding themselves and their families mediocre food filled with preservatives.

[60] Food writer Anthony Bourdain, who was harshly critical of Lee in general, described the video clip of this segment of the show as "eye searing" and "a war crime".

[61][62][63] The cake was called "scary" by the Houston Chronicle,[64] and "the most ghastly-sounding dish in Lee's culinary repertoire" by Tulsa World.

[69][15] In the fall of 2005, Lee entered into a relationship with Andrew Cuomo, who served as the 56th Governor of New York from 2011[11][70] until his resignation in August 2021.

[74] Lee has been reported to be dating the Algerian-born Abdulwahab Benyoucef, an actor professionally known as Ben Youcef, since March 2021.

[76] In August 2015, she contracted an infection in her right breast that resulted in her going on bed rest and receiving intravenous drugs for three months.

[79] In 2016, Lee pushed for the passage of the $91 million "No Excuses" law in the state of New York,[77] which provided for expanded breast cancer screening and removed insurance co-pays for mammograms.

[80] Lee was a keynote speaker at the Susan G. Komen Advocacy Summit for breast cancer awareness in Washington, D.C., in May 2019.