The young composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn was only 16 when he wrote the majority of "Lush Life", which shows a surprising maturity in its complex chord changes and dreamlike character.  He offered his composition  to Duke Ellington in 1938; less than a year later, Strayhorn had become an arranger and pianist with the Ellington band, a collaboration that was to last until Strayhorn's death in 1967. Ellington once described Strayhorn as "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine" and their collaboration produced some of the most remarkable and enduring American music of the twentieth century.

"Lush Life" did not have its first public performance until November 13, 1948, with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and the work was published shortly thereafter by Tempo Music, the music publishing firm founded by Ellington in the early 1940s. The cover of that eventual publication consisted of a very simple design featuring only the song title and five star shapes, the present original concept having evidently been considered too graphic and controversial an image.