Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Lee Lufkin went to New York to study painting with Charles Melville Dewey before traveling to Paris with her friend, Claire Shuttleworth, in 1894. There she studied at the Académie Colarossi with Edmond Aman-Jean and received encouragement from Charles Gruppé. In Crécy she met William J. Kaula whom she married in 1902. The Kaula's were among the first occupants of Fenway Studios in Boston; they moved to the large corner studio, number 311, just after the building opened in 1905 and worked and lived there until the death of William Kaula in 1953. They spent summers in New Ipswich, New Hampshire.