Marlena has been writing and directing various types of projects for over a decade. Born in Los Angeles, Lerner began producing long-form content over the course of eight years on Youtube for a wide audience  at ten years old. While the cohesively of such content is debatable, the web-series was  developed into a feature film that received Netflix distribution in 2015. Lerner attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she received a BFA in Film & Television Production. In 2024, she completed her her first short "Dirty" and joined the Los Angeles-based freelance collective Stained Studios. She is currently based in New York.