Born in New York City, Jennifer Macdonald is the daughter of the American poet Cynthia Macdonald. Macdonald attended Brown University and graduated from The School of Visual Arts with honors before starting to collaborate with Leone in the late 1980s. Macdonald was an adjunct professor at Hunter College and a visiting professor at universities such as New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at San Diego, Columbia University, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Leone & Macdonald are two-time National Endowments for the Arts grant recipients, three-time Art Matters Foundation Fellowship recipients, Penny McCall Foundation Grant and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant recipients.
