Lee was born on September 12, 1906, in Kauai, Hawaii. She was of Chinese and French descent; her father was a Chinese medical doctor and her mother was of French ancestry. She grew up in California and went on to get her degree in education at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Lee moved back to Hawaii to be a teacher, before returning to Los Angeles to begin her career as an actress.
Film career
Throughout her film career, Lee was cast mainly in roles featuring stereotypical depictions of East Asian people, and often as slaves and maids. Lee's first film was A Tale of Two Worlds in 1921, where she played Ah Fah, a Chinese maid. This film prominently featured white actors in yellow face, with Lee being an actual Chinese person cast in a role that implied real East Asian people were inferior. This trend continued for the remainder of her career. She played another Chinese maid named Liu in the 1923 filmThe Remittance Woman, a maid in The Untameable, A Thief in Paradise, The Trouble with Wives, and International House. Other so-called exotic roles she was cast in included The Slave of the Sand Board in The Thief of Bagdad. Lee directly commented on the lack of diversity in her roles in an article in The Independent in 1924, fairly early on in her career. She noted that “I am equipped…to show oriental impulse and emotional complexities. But in this field I have not yet had opportunity.” She went on to discuss that even in terms of getting role meant for Chinese women, she was often turned down because she was mixed race and did not look Chinese enough. Lee was the only prominent mixed race Eurasian actress in Hollywood during this time. A majority of articles written about her focused on her beauty rather than acting skills. Barrett Clark published an interview piece in Motion Picture Classic where he discussed Lee: “For of course her name should have been something in Chinese that sounded like Limehouse Nights stories… something about scarlet petals and silver rivers…something about white almond blossoms and rose leaves…and then they had to name this lovely peach blow half-caste girl Etta Lee.” Throughout this article Clark makes allusions to stereotypical "Chinese things" such as Buddhism and jade, and makes an attempt to explain that she does not act as if she is Chinese. But toward the end, Lee comments on how she is proud of her heritage.
Lee retired from acting after marrying Frank Robinson Brown in 1932. She became active in her community following her retirement, becoming chairwoman of the Eureka Woman's Club. She was also an active member of the Episcopal Church. Lee died at age 50 on October 27, 1956 in Eureka, California.
