Sung Hi Lee was born on April 1, 1970 in Eun-Pyung Gu (Gi-Ja Chon), a borough of Seoul (South Korea). At the age of two Sung Hi's parents divorced, leaving her and her younger brother to be raised by her grandparents. Sung Hi describes herself as a child as "a tomboy – climbing trees, making mud pies and playing with tadpoles and frogs." In 1978 (February 19), during her elementary school years, she and her brother moved to Chicago (USA) to be with their father.


Sung Hi was brought up in the Korean tradition of strict discipline. She got good grades in school, but had a hard time of adolescence, with few friends. Her father, an alcohohlic, wasn't good at supporting his daughter financially and emotionally, providing his daughter with seven successive stepmothers. These circumstances prompted the young Sung Hi to leave home on occasion and contemplate suicide. Graduating with honors from high school, Sung Hi abandoned a college scholarship due to a lack of money. After her grandmother died, Sung Hi helped support her father and brother by waitressing. From the windy city Chicago they settled successively in Houston, Dallas and Washington D.C, and Columbus. It was in 1988 at a Dallas nightclub where Sung Hi was discovered by her future agent Jim Whitehead. In 1991 Sung Hi enrolled at Ohio State University and spent three years in an exercise psychology program. One day, she threw away her dream of being a doctor and left the university in favor of full-time modeling in New York.

However, with measurements of 5’4", 106 pounds, 33" B -cup bust (reshaped at some time as she has revealed), 23" waist, and 33.5" hips, she was a bit short for the New York modeling scene and frequently took the red-eye flight to Los Angeles jobs. At that time the first photographs of Sung Hi appeared in Playboy’s Book of Lingerie. In 1995 Sung Hi participated in the Hawaiian Tropic Beauty Contest where she represented Pusan (Korea) because Seoul was already taken by someone else. Although she was only 3rd runner up, after winner Krista Frazier, her star was definitively born. Even more, the contest led to her appearance on advertisements for e.g. Hawaiian Tropics, Sunkist OrangeJuice, Chrysler Plymouth, and Hilton Hotel. In the same year she made the move to Los Angeles. Soon after Pacific USA shot her for their 1996 Pacific USA calendar and featured her on the cover. About one year later, East Meets West calendars offered to produce her own personal calendar in exchange for her agreeing not to appear in any other calendars. Since then she has appeared in advertisements, magazines, video’s and movies as we all know.