Eunmi Lee is a South Korean-born pianist, composer and bandleader who has lived in New York since 2020. Her own site calls her Korean-born and New York-based, NYU's Steinhardt school says she is from South Korea, and an ARStash feature on her debut says she was born there. No birth date, birth year or hometown has been published. Her releases, website, Bandcamp and Apple Music all bill her as Eunmi Lee; Discogs files her releases under the page "Eunmi Lee Moon" with "Eunmi Lee" as a name variation. No source gives a Hangul spelling of her name, so none is shown here.

Her musical life started in Seoul. Her artist biography on Deezer says she did an associate degree at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, and the ARStash feature describes it as her first degree, an associate degree in music, earned in Seoul. Her website and the JW Vibe press feature say she worked professionally in theater, live performance (the bandstand) and media music in Korea before turning more seriously to jazz; NYU describes her as coming to jazz through exploration rather than from childhood. The same Deezer biography lists a prize at the Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival in 2013. No independent record of that prize turned up, and the years of her Seoul career are not published.

In 2016 she went to the Netherlands for a Bachelor of Music in jazz piano at Zuyd University in Maastricht, on a Holland National Excellence scholarship, and finished in 2019, a year ahead of schedule. Her debut album carries a piece called "5.19" that she wrote about meeting new people and cultures in the Netherlands on May 19 of an earlier year. Her Deezer biography adds a semi-finalist place in the 7 Virtual Jazz Contest in 2019.

She moved to New York in 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 lockdowns, and earned a Master of Music in jazz piano at New York University (class of 2022, per NYU). The ARStash feature names the trombonist Alan Ferber as one of her teachers and the most influential musician she met there, and her Deezer biography says she worked with Ferber and with the drummer Ari Hoenig. Ferber produced her debut and Hoenig plays drums on it. Her website lists her as a member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop since 2023, and she received an honorable mention in the 2023 Ithaca International Jazz Composition Contest.

Introspection came out on July 14, 2023. It has seven pieces, all composed and arranged by her, written since 2017, and it moves between a string trio with guitar and bass clarinet, quartet and sextet settings, and a full big band. The players include the trumpeter Tony Kadleck, the trombonist Alan Ferber, the saxophonists Jon Gordon, Remy Le Boeuf and John Ellis, the guitarist Vinicius Gomes, the bassist Matt Clohesy and Hoenig, with the violinists Joyce Hammann and Meg Okura, the violist Lois Martin and the cellists Jody Redhage and Maria Jeffers on the string pieces. Tyler McDiarmid recorded, mixed and mastered it. Two of the pieces, "Narcissism" and "Mr. Weird", were released as singles on June 1, 2023, and "Mr. Weird" also appears on the Jazziz Fall 2023 "Women" CD sampler. Reviewers in the jazz press covered the album widely: Thomas Cunniffe at Jazz History Online called her voice unique, Filipe Freitas at JazzTrail praised it as a pleasurable debut that shows off her writing, Take Effect gave it 8 out of 10, and Thierry De Clemensat at Paris-Move found the writing well made but "elitist" in its classical leanings. She lists All About Jazz's Jack Bowers among the reviewers on her press page.

After the album her work has centered on large-ensemble writing. She received a 2025 New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists grant to write for a 17-piece band, and NYU Steinhardt reported the grant in April 2026 under the project name "Eunmi Lee Jazz Orchestra: The Sound of Resonance". On December 9, 2025 the Eunmi Lee Jazz Orchestra played an hour-long set of her original big-band music at The Jazz Gallery in New York, a free concert listed by the Korean Cultural Center New York as her debut as a big-band leader. The 17 players included Kadleck and Ellis from the album, with Dave Pietro, Ehan Helm, Ben Kono and Andrew Hadro in the reeds, Adam Birnbaum on piano, Sebastian Noelle on guitar, Evan Gregor on bass and Peter Kronreif on drums. Her site adds a 2026 Queens Arts Fund New Work Grant, the 2026 John Stites Jazz Award, which supports her study of large-ensemble composition and research into Korean rhythmic traditions, and the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble Prize in the 45th International Alliance for Women in Music Search for New Music Competition for her composition "Enigma". Her work has also been presented through The Jazz Gallery's Jazz Composers' Showcase.

Her music is program music in a plain sense: each piece starts from an observation about people. In her liner notes "Gimmick" is about the second ego people put on to be noticed, "Narcissism" about everyone gazing at a phone and projecting a happy face online, "Mr. Weird" about imagining herself as a stranger in a park, and "Wavelength" about the kindness she met during the pandemic in New York. JazzTrail's Filipe Freitas hears "Gimmick" as advanced post-bop in the spirit of Joe Henderson's pieces with Chick Corea, the flow of "Narcissism" as recalling the quintet of Dave Holland, and "Mr. Weird" as a luxurious-swing big band piece with Basie, Ellington and Gil Evans as references. "Suspicion" is a chamber piece for strings, bass clarinet and guitar that she wrote to experiment outside functional harmony; she plays no piano on it.

Paris-Move heard classical and jazz bouncing off each other, and JW Vibe wrote that she stays outside any safe category. An All That's Jazz podcast episode with her describes the album as drawn from big band jazz, post-bop, chamber music and even Brazilian music, subtly shaded with Korean culture, and the guitarist Gomes is Brazilian. NYU's summary of an interview with her says she blends her Korean heritage with contemporary jazz in a way that feels organic, and her website says her current work explores large-ensemble composition, rhythmic structure, improvisation and Korean-informed musical ideas.

Her jazz identity is not in doubt. She holds an NYU jazz piano degree, was a semi-finalist and honorable-mention winner in jazz competitions, plays and presents her work at The Jazz Gallery, and Apple Music and Bandcamp file her under jazz. The chamber and classical colors are part of how she writes.