Lisa Lillien


Lisa Lillien is an American entrepreneur. She is the creator of the Hungry Girl brand, including email-subscription, cookbooks, low-calorie recipes, and life-hacks.

Background

Lillien's roots are in magazines and, more generally, entertainment. She grew up on Long Island and identifies as Jewish. She graduated from Lawrence High School in 1983. She does not have a degree in nutrition, but uses the neologism foodologist due to obsession with food. She did, however, receive a B.A. in communication from University at Albany, SUNY in 1987. Directly from college she became editor-in-chief at Tutti Frutti.

Career

Business

For five years, Lillien was online executive producer for TV Land and director of convergence development at Nickelodeon online. Next she was a producer for new media at Telepictures.
She quit her job and started the Hungry Girl brand in 2004, with a weekly email. She has averaged over one million subscribers. The content consists mainly of recipes and life-hacks, written in a pink, exclamation-point, LOL style; or as Lillien once put it, "getting excited over silly things When I launched Hungry Girl, I wanted it to be the same...writing style conversational and excited, writing about teen stars, and pop stars...".
Regular advertisers across media have included Weight Watchers, Dreyers light ice cream, and General Mills, later including Green Giant, Quaker, The Laughing Cow cheeses, and Beyond Better Foods.

Media

As a writer, Lillien has had a weekly column on the Weight Watchers website and has written for Redbook magazine. She has appeared on cooking shows like Rachael Ray.
In 2009, Lillien responded to Patti Labelle's audition-call to be her personal chef on the Tyra Banks Show. According to Lillien, it turned into a "smackdown" and became a point-of-discussion regarding social interaction, passive-aggressiveness, condescension, even microaggression/racism. On March 7, 2020, Saturday Night Live presented a sketch parodying the interaction, featuring Ego Nwodim, guest host Daniel Craig, and Aidy Bryant.
In 2011 and 2012, Triage Entertainment produced 36 episodes of a Hungry Girl program; they aired on Cooking Channel and Food Network. The recipes of the 2012 season remain online.
The Meredith Corporation began a quarterly Hungry Girl magazine in 2018.

Personal life

In 2002, Lillien married writer/producer Dan Schneider. They have a dog, Lolly, and live in Encino, California.

Books