A native of Chicago, Lee attended Northwestern University, where she received a degree in microbiology while working part-time in her family's thriving flower business. Lee intended to pursue a career in social work but was detoured into broadcasting. She frequently accompanied her brother to a local television program, where he demonstrated flower arranging. WBKB asked Lee if she would be their resident florist. Several month later CBS purchased the station and renamed it WBBM, and Lee was offered a job as a vacation replacement, begining with station breaks.

She eventually became director of special projects/programming and soon began hosting her own program, The Lee Phillip Show, which was pioneer in the evolution of the afternoon talk-show format and a trailblazer in the exploration of timely social issues. The program featured TV's first on-air self-breast examination for women, a prototype for similar projects broadcast throughout the country. She was also a contributing editor to Daybreak, the early-morning program, and contributed to produce and narrate numerous award-winning specials and documentaries on such social concerns as foster care, rape, children of divorced parents, and babies born to women in prison.

Today, Lee's involvment in social issues continues with such institutions as the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, the Mental Health Association, Children's Home & Aid Society, the Salvation Army, Family Focus, and Northwestern University.

While working at WBBM-TV, Lee met her future husband, William J. Bell, then a rising advertising executive with McCann-Ericson. "As soon as we started dating, I needed scripts, and I forced Bill into writing them," Lee told the Los Angeles Daily News. "He was the best writer I knew."

Lee and Bill have maintained a truly collegial relationship over the past three decades. While Bill was writing such serieses as The Guiding Light and As The World Turns and co-creating Another World with Irna Phillips, Lee continued her own career as a broadcast journalist, passing along to her husband her research on documentary topics from her talk show, which he later wove into his dramatic storylines. Bill, in turn, would assist Lee in the preparation for her own materials and in formulating her approach to her subject matter.

As a drama series producer, Lee has been honored by awards and nominations from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the NAACP Image Awards, and the Soap Opera Digest Awards. She recently recieved the 1993 Broadcaster of the Year Award from the American Women in Radio & Television and the 1993 Directors Choice Award from the National Women's Economic Alliance Foundation.

Lee was also the recipient of sixteen local Emmys, a national Emmy for Community Service, and the Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia University Award for the special The Rape of Paulette, the first program in Chicago to explore the issue. In 1977, she was the first woman to receive the coveted Governor's Award from the Chicago chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In 1980 she was named Person of the Year by the Broadcast Advertising Club of Chicago and the Outstanding Woman in Communications by the Chicago YMCA. She recently received the Salvation Army's William Booth Award for her distinguished career in community and social service.

Long time residents of Chicago, the Bell family moved to Los Angeles permanetly shortly before The Bold and the Beautiful debuted in 1987. They reside in Beverly Hills in a former residence of Howard Huges which they have extensively renovated.