Lee began her career in 1968 on in Slave ship, a stage production based on the outline of LeRoi Jones later known as Amiri Baraka. She appeared at The Orpheum Theatre in a musical production called Do Your Own Thing, based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and in an off-Broadway production, The Believers. She played Cordelia opposite James Earl Jones's King Lear in 1974 in the Delacorte Theatre at the New York Shakespeare in the Park Festival. She went on to win six AUDELCO Awards for Excellence in Black Theater on November 21, 1988, for her musical play Struttin’, performed at the Rosetta LeNoire AMAS Repertory Theater. She also appeared in the play Hospice produced at The Henry Street Settlement Theatre in Lower Manhattan.