Lillien's roots are in magazines[2] and, more generally, entertainment.[3] Lillien is the daughter of Maurice Lillien (1933-2022) and Florence Lillien, and has two siblings, Jay and Meri, and is the aunt of Lauren, Max and Jake. She grew up on Long Island and identifies as Jewish ("a nice Jewish girl from Long Island").[4][5]
She graduated from Lawrence High School in 1983.[4] She does not have a degree in nutrition, but uses the neologismfoodologist due to obsession with food.[6] She received a B.A. in communication from University at Albany, SUNY in 1987. Directly from college she became editor-in-chief at Tutti Frutti (teen-fan magazine, Jimmijack Publishing, 1987–1991).[7]
Career
Business
For five years, Lillien was online executive producer for TV Land and director of convergence development at Nickelodeon online. Next she was a producer for new media at Telepictures (Warner Bros.).[8] She quit her job and started the Hungry Girl brand in 2004, with a weekly email (originally Tips and Tricks ... for Hungry Chicks). She has averaged over one million subscribers.[9] The content consists mainly of recipes and life hacks,[10] written in a pink, exclamation-point, LOL style; or as Lillien once put it, "getting excited over silly things [...] When I launched Hungry Girl, I wanted it to be the same...writing style[:] conversational and excited, [like] writing about teen stars, and pop stars...".[11]
As a writer, Lillien has had a weekly column on the Weight Watchers website and has written for Redbook magazine. She has appeared on cooking shows like Rachael Ray.[9]
In 2011 and 2012, Triage Entertainment produced 36 episodes of a Hungry Girl program; they aired on Cooking Channel and Food Network. The recipes of the 2012 season remain online.[12]
The Meredith Corporation began a quarterly Hungry Girl magazine in 2018.[13]
