His love of music started as a toddler by playing with pots and pans, using them as makeshift drums. That first glimpse of talent at such a young age was fostered by both of his parents who were involved in TV themselves, his father worked as a news producer and his mother is best known for her role as Helen Willis on the TV sitcom The Jeffersons.

After relocating to LA in 1974 because of his mother's career, Lenny won a spot with the California Boys Choir. He began teaching himself to play the bass, piano, guitar and drums and was accepted into the music program at Beverly Hills High School. Everything went well until he discovered Prince, and then his academic work took a nosedive. Krazitz started calling himself "Romeo Blue" and barely graduated from high school in 1982.

Lenny's father tried helping him obtain a record deal but was told that his son's music wasn't "Black" enough to be successful. Suffering from that disappointment as well as his parents' divorce, Kravitz floundered for a few years until he met actress Lisa Bonet. They became good friends and were soon living together. Eventually they married and moved back to New York where she worked on The Cosby Show. Kravitz found Henry Hirsch who liked Kravitz's style, and they eventually produced his first album, Let Love Rule. About this time his wife also had their first daughter Zoe.

His first album, along with a video which was directed by his wife, became a smash hit. During all of this success, Kravitz was rumored to be having multiple affairs, Madonna being one of them, and he and Bonet separated and divorced.

Next came the release of his new album Mama Said. Its big hit was "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over." Critics were still not impressed with Kravitz until Are You Gonna Go My Way, his third album, was released. This work earned him the MTV Video Award for Best Male Video. Tragedy struck when soon after the release of his third album, his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. His personal life, as before, became an integral part of his work, and his new album Circus reflected his pain. His mother died the day after his daughter's 7th birthday.

Kravitz vanished to the Bahamas for a while to examine which direction his life should take. This time of retrospection produced his album titled 5, which includes a tribute to his mother "Thinking of You" and a birthday song to his daughter "Little Girl's Eyes." Kravitz won the 1999 Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for his single "Fly Away."

In March of 2000, he received the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "American Woman".