Barbara F. Lee

Barbara Fish Lee (born July 3, 1945) is an American philanthropist. She founded and led the Barbara Lee Family Foundation and the Barbara Lee Political Office, both located in Cambridge, Massachusetts until winding down in 2024. Major targets of Lee's donations include Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. In May 2014, the magazine Boston listed Lee among Boston's Most Powerful Thought Leaders.

Early life Barbara Fish was born on July 3, 1945, to Sidney and Ruth Fish. She was raised in a middle-class Jewish family in West Orange, New Jersey.

Since 2014, she has funded the Barbara Lee Fellowship for Simmons College students to intern with female legislators. In 2017, Simmons College recognized Lee's work with a lifetime achievement award.

Career Through Barbara Lee's marriage to Thomas H. Lee and her subsequent divorce, she acquired significant wealth that led her to transition from working as a middle school French teacher to philanthropic roles. In the early 1980s, Lee was invited to the board of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston by its treasurer, Steven Grossman.

Campaign support Lee chooses to support current and potential political candidates as well as artists who are women. While Lee receives some criticism for supporting only woman candidates, she insists that it is not a gender issue. She has contributed upwards of $2.5 million to various campaigns.

Art collection Lee became interested in modern art after her father took her to the Museum of Modern Art's 50th anniversary exhibit of the Armory Show. Additionally, Lee's mother-in-law, Mildred Schiff Lee, was an early collector of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. She served them as a Vice Chair on their Board of Trustees in 2020.

Barbara Lee Family Foundation Barbara Lee founded the Barbara Lee Family Foundation in 1998 to support gender equality in politics. The Foundation's goal is to produce non-partisan research for women candidates, as compared to EMILY's List, which only supports pro-choice Democrats.

The Barbara Lee Family Foundation promotes the possibility of successful female presidential candidates by supporting women in lower political positions, such as national and state congressional races. It argues that women increase their perceived self-efficacy to run for office when they see other women occupying political positions like governorships.

In November 2023, Lee announced that she would wind down the foundation's and her political office's work by the end of 2024. When operating, the political office helped elect more than 200 women across 37 states and supported the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign to elect Kamala Harris as the first women vice president. It directly contributed $2 million to over 400 women candidates and separately contributed over $2 million to PACs to support the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

Personal life Barbara Lee was married to investor Thomas H. Lee from 1968 to 1995. Thomas Lee amassed a significant net worth through his private equity investment firm, Thomas H. Lee Partners. The couple had two sons, Zach (born 1971) and Robbie Lee. Lee foreshadowed her own future activism when she gifted all the women at her son Zach's first birthday with copies of the first Ms. magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes.

Barbara Lee originally filed for divorce from her husband in 1987 but ended the petition two years later. Following her husband's 1993 affair with Laura Goldman, Barbara divorced Thomas Lee in 1995, leaving her with half of their combined personal wealth (approximately $210 million).