M Denise Lee

Denise Lee is an award-winning performing artist whose started her career in Dallas and has made it her home base for over 30 years. She has an impressively diverse local and national following. Her musical magic has also delighted international crowds at clubs in Shanghai, Beijing, Switzerland and France.
She has now added Producer to her list of accomplishments by creating the Denise Lee Onstage Cabaret Series and the Dallas Cabaret Festival entering it’s 5th and 4th year respectively. For the last seven years she has focused on bringing cabaret style performances to the forefront of Dallas entertainment. She has performed/produce these performances all over Dallas/Ft. Worth. She finally landed a temporary home at the Women’s Museum in Fair Park. After a successful 3 year run and debuting the Dallas Cabaret Festival, she has now found a home for the last 2 years at the historic Bath House Cultural Center Underground. The DLO Cabaret series, entering its 6th year and the DCF, entering it’s 5th year, has become a premiere showcase for Dallas-based veteran and novice Cabaret performers alike. In addition to teaching Cabaret Workshops, she has created a vehicle to develop, mentor and showcase up and coming Cabaret artists – the ‘So You Think You Can Cabaret’ competition. The winner is then showcased in a 45-minute set at the Dallas Cabaret Festival.
As a performer, her talents are on full display in her one-woman shows, ‘Denise Lee Sing the Divas of American Music’ and ‘Too Old, Too Fat, Too Black – Songs I’ll Never Sing On Broadway’ for which she won a Broadway World Award for ‘Best Cabaret Performer’. She is the recipient of the first Sammons Center for the Arts Cabaret Artist of the Year, multiple DFW Theater Critics and Dallas Readers Voice Awards. And on August 24th, for her artistic and community activist contributions she will be awarded the 2019 ‘Hero of Hope’ Award.
She has performed at almost every theater in DFW and has multiple theater and television credits including ‘The Sunshine Boys’ with Dick & Jerry Van Dyke and ‘Crowns’ directed by playwright Regina Taylor. Also, episodes of ‘Queen of the South, ‘Queen Sugar’ as well as numerous commercials and corporate industrials.
As a community advocate and activist, she serves on the board of the Dallas Street Choir and is currently working, in a micro-residency capacity, with the Office of Equity and Human rights. In addition to that, she founded and host monthly ‘Community Conversations’ through her ‘Change the Perception initiative. These monthly gatherings bring people of all backgrounds, from all walks of life together for respectful, open, honest dialogue in order to heal racial and community tension and division.