Robinne Lee Books in Order

Robinne Lee is a Jamaican-Chinese writer, actor, and producer who was born and raised in New York. Before publishing fiction, she built a long career on screen, appearing in films including Hav Plenty, 13 Going on 30, Hitch, Seven Pounds, and the Fifty Shades films.

She studied psychology at Yale University, then earned a law degree at Columbia Law School. She later became an inactive member of the New York Bar. It wasn’t a tidy, one-track route into creative work, but writing had been part of her life for years.

Her move into fiction gave her room to stay with big questions longer.

Lee published her first novel, The Idea of You, in 2017. It follows Solène Marchand, a divorced Los Angeles gallery owner and mother, after she meets Hayes Campbell, the young singer in a hugely popular band. The relationship takes them from concert crowds to art-world spaces, but the story keeps its focus on Solène’s private choices, her daughter, and the pressure that comes with being turned into public entertainment.

The book blends sensual scenes and glossy settings with a close look at age, motherhood, celebrity, and a woman’s right to want more from her own life. It also makes room for travel, art, music, and the awkward collision between private feeling and mass fandom.

Then the story found an even wider audience.

A film adaptation arrived in 2024 with Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, and Lee served as a producer. The movie introduced Solène and Hayes to new viewers, while the novel remained a more extended look at a relationship shaped by a large age gap, paparazzi attention, and the needs of a child caught near the center of the storm.

Her second novel, Crash Into Me, moves into different territory while staying interested in desire and self-definition. Cecilia Chen, an artist, wife, and mother living in Los Angeles, unexpectedly reconnects with Anouk Ferrand, a famous model she knew years earlier. Their encounter makes Cecilia revisit the past and take a harder look at marriage, race, class, power, and the version of herself she has been expected to be.

The novel has a more tangled, adult setup, but it shares Lee’s interest in emotional risk and in women making room for their own complicated wants.

Lee has also produced independent films and spoken and written about opportunities for women and artists of color in publishing and film. She has continued to work across more than one form, rather than treating the page and the screen as separate worlds. After many years in Los Angeles, she now lives in Paris with her husband and their two children.