Bongwool Lee (이봉울) is a pianist and composer who was born and raised in Seoul and has worked in both New York and Seoul. Her label biography says she began music at the age of four, was regarded as a classical prodigy and won Korea's Samik Competition at seven. She turned to jazz after hearing Oscar Peterson on the radio; she told DownBeat she was 16 when she decided to become a jazz musician, even though she knew nothing about chords. Her birth date and year are not published in any source found.

She graduated from Dongduk Women's University in Seoul (the Kyung Hee University department page that lists her gives the bachelor's degree as practical music) and then moved to New York. She earned a master's degree in jazz piano performance at the Manhattan School of Music in 2012, studying with Dave Liebman, John Reilly, Gary Dial, Bobby Sanabria and Phil Markowitz among others, according to her label. The pianist Taylor Eigsti told DownBeat that he met her about five years before the August 2018 interview, when she came to him for piano lessons, and that she was very shy at first. He later became associate producer of her album.

In New York she led her own trio and quartet. Video clips on her YouTube channel date from November 2014, and one posted in July 2015 shows the Bongwool Lee Trio at Rockwood Music Hall's Stage 3 with Leo Sherman on bass and Andy Rinn Martinek on drums, playing a Led Zeppelin tune.

My Singing Fingers is her only album under her own name. It was recorded on August 26, 2016 by Tom Tedesco at Tedesco Studios in Paramus, New Jersey, with the bassist Luques Curtis and the drummer Kendrick Scott, and released by the Seattle label Origin Records (catalogue ORIGIN 82758). Streaming services list a release date of May 18, 2018, and Challenge Records lists the CD at July 6, 2018. Bongwool Lee produced it, Eigsti is credited as associate producer and plays Fender Rhodes on "Why Not", Chris Allen mixed it and Nate Wood mastered it at Kerseboom Mastering. Eight of the nine tracks are her own compositions; the exception is "Bye Bye Blackbird". It drew reviews from All About Jazz (Dan McClenaghan on May 25, 2018 and Paul Rauch on July 14, 2018), Jazz Weekly (George W. Harris, July 9, 2018) and Roots Music Report, and DownBeat ran a feature on her by Dan Ouellette on August 24, 2018.

By the end of 2018 she was playing in Seoul. A year-end concert listing names her as the pianist, with the bassist Won Hyeon-jo (원현조) and the drummer Lee U-min (이우민), behind the singer David Kim in the show "Jazz Story Vol. 4" on December 29, 2018 at Buam Art Hall. The Kyung Hee department page lists a 2019 concert marking her return to Korea and the release of the album ("귀국 기념 및 앨범 발매 쇼케이스"), and a Korean CD edition of My Singing Fingers is listed at Yes24 with a date of June 24, 2020. A listing for her August 2023 concert at the Seoul venue EMU describes her as a 2019 nominee for a jazz album at a Korean popular music awards ceremony, and the Korean Music Awards website carries a review of the album; the edition and category of the nomination are not itemized in the sources found.

Her Korean activity since then runs through sessions, festivals and her own trio. In 2020 she is the featured pianist on "Moon River", a single by the baritone Lee Eung-gwang (이응광) released on September 29, 2020. She was one of the pianists announced for "Remembering Chick Corea" in 2021, in a program billed as 2x5 Pianists on June 13 alongside the pianists 민경인, 남경윤, 이명건 and 오은혜 and five others. Her department page lists a Naver On Stage appearance in 2021 and EBS Space Gonggam in 2022; EBS's own page for the October 28, 2022 broadcast credits her on keyboards in Kim Mun-hee (김문희)'s band for "Make It Boogie". On June 23, 2022 she recorded a house concert at Advart Place with the bassist Hoo Kim (김영후) and the drummer Manuel Weyand, and two filmed pieces from it, "After the Black Dog" and "Go Ahead", were posted that August. On August 4, 2023 she led the trio at EMU with Kim and Weyand in a concert titled "August Flavor", and the same department page lists 2023 and 2024 festival dates with Lee Eung-gwang and Kim at the Icheon and Gimcheon international music festivals, a 2023 appearance with Moon & Bouncers (Kim Mun-hee's project) and recording work on a 2024 album by Sam Tru.

Kyung Hee University's Department of Postmodern Music lists her as an adjunct professor (겸임교수) of jazz piano, on a faculty page dated October 15, 2025.

DownBeat quotes her saying that when she plays she does not think about scales or licks and tries to follow a singing approach, and that she does not plan meticulously and prefers varied situations because they give her more ideas. She told the magazine she loves hip-hop, hard rock, soul and funk and named D'Angelo as a major influence; a D'Angelo concert inspired "Why Not", the soul-funk groove on which she wanted to record in a simple style. Eigsti's description of her music, which Origin prints, is a balance of strong melodies, rich harmonies, and the accessible with the unpredictable.

Reviewers place the album in the piano-trio tradition. McClenaghan hears a crisp delicacy of touch and a hopeful feeling in the title track and links her first jazz inspiration to Oscar Peterson. Rauch finds a Chopin-like melody in "How's Up There?" and a connection to the blues in "Repeating Nightmares", and compares her "Bye Bye Blackbird" with the probing approach of Miles Davis as well as the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio. Harris describes a brushes-led "Bye Bye Blackbird", an elegiac solo piece in "Burning Incense", an assertive "Repeating Nightmares" and a soulful Fender Rhodes strut on "Why Not". Origin's page also quotes Dave Sumner of Bird Is the Worm calling the set a straight-ahead piano trio that blends old-school jazz with modern post-bop, which is the basis for the two style tags above.

DownBeat describes "How's Up There?" as a tribute to a close friend who died in an accident, "Feminite Du Bois" as a playful nod to a perfume that has been discontinued, and "Burning Incense" as a classical-style solo piece that closes the album. No second album of her own and no interview about her later work were found.