"If you're a good composer, you'll come up with pieces that live beyond just the film. Not every film lends itself to writing something really strong that would live beyond the film, but with East of Eden or Splash, if you have a great theme, it goes on in other incarnations."
- Lee Holdridge in 1999

Lee Holdridge was born in March, 1944 in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. He spent his early years in Costa Rica, beginning music studies on the violin at the age of ten with Hugo Mariani, then the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica. At fifteen (the age at which he became determined to be a composer) he moved to Boston to finish high school and study composition with Henry Lasker. In 1962, Holdridge moved to New York at age eighteen to continue his music studies and begin his professional career as a composer. While in New York, he wrote chamber works, rock pieces, songs, theater music, and background scores for short films. Holdridge's successes in New York came to the attention of legend Neil Diamond, who brought Holdridge to Los Angeles to write arrangements for Diamond's forthcoming albums. A string of gold and platinum hits followed, which led to Diamond and Holdridge collaborating on the film score for Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1973.

Since that time, Holdridge has scored over 150 film and television projects. In the 1980's, Holdridge scored the biggest motion pictures of his career, including such popular favorites as Splash, The Beastmaster, El Pueblo del Sol, and Old Gringo. His television work was (and has remained) far more prolific, with early television efforts highlighted by music for Moonlighting, Beauty and the Beast, and East of Eden. After scoring the film Pastime in 1991 (winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival), Holdridge concentrated heavily on television films and mini-series, as well as highly acclaimed documentaries. Among others, Holdridge has written music for films on NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, Turner (TNT), HBO, and Showtime. His heavily dramatic work for Into Thin Air and Into the Arms of Strangers was offset by flamboyant children's songs opposite Rachel Portman's score in The Adventures of Pinocchio.

In addition to his film career, Holdridge has had an extensive repertoire of concert works performed and recorded, and has also worked with many major recording artists. He has written, arranged and conducted for Placido Domingo (leading to several CD album releases), Barbra Streisand, Brian May of Queen, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, John Denver, Al Jarreau, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Natalie Cole, and many others. Holdridge has received numerous awards and nominations during his career, including five Emmies, two of which for Beauty and the Beast. He received both Emmy and Grammy nominations for his title song for "Moonlighting," which he co-wrote with Al Jarreau, and he also received the prestigious "Circle of Friends of Music" award, given in Italy in 1972 for his "Ballet Fantasy for Strings and Harp." His theatre works include the Opera "Lazarus and his Beloved," the Broadway musical "Into the Light," and co-authorship of the Joffrey Ballet standard "Trinity."

Continuing his extensive assignments for television films and series in the 2000's, Holdridge exploded into mainstream pop culture once again with his massive orchestral score for the TNT mini-series The Mists of Avalon in 2001. Ranking at the top of many film music critics' lists of top scores for the year, The Mists of Avalon sailed on to magnificent success on CD album. With heartfelt scores for Latino-themed projects (from the dramatic Old Gringo to the PBS TV series "American Family"), Holdridge long remained one of only a few major Latino representatives in a scoring industry otherwise dominated by composers of American and European origins.