Ilene Chaiken

Chaiken has stated that her experiences as a lesbian were the primary inspiration for her show The L Word. Her first romance with another woman, which ended in heartbreak when the woman revealed she had a long-distance girlfriend, served as a loose inspiration for the relationship of the characters Marina and Jenny. Chaiken has been married to LouAnne Brickhouse, a former executive at Disney, since 2013. They live in the Hollywood Hills area of Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles and have nurtured more than 100 species of birds and other fauna, which they document regularly on an Instagram account. Chaiken is co-parent to twin daughters Tallulah and Augusta with her former partner, English architect Miggi Hood.

She began her career as an agent trainee for Creative Artists Agency, and as an executive for Aaron Spelling and Quincy Jones Entertainment. In 1988, she was the coordinating producer for the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and the associate producer for Satisfaction. She then wrote the screenplay Barb Wire (1996), and the television films Dirty Pictures (2000), and Damaged Care (2002). Dirty Pictures won the Golden Globe for Best Television Movie in 2000. In 2004 she co-created The L Word, inspired largely by her own experiences as a lesbian woman. In 2007, Chaiken, and a group of women in the entertainment and tech industries, launched a social networking site called OurChart for lesbians and their friends. OurChart was online until 2008, when it was shutdown. In 2008, a spin-off show of The L Word entitled The Farm was in development and two pilots were being written by Chaiken, although Showtime never bought the series. She is credited with first developing the idea for a TV adaptation of novel The Handmaid's Tale, which is now a successful Hulu original show. Chaiken left the project to become the show-runner on Fox's Empire. She is credited as an executive producer for The Handmaid's Tale. In January 2019, Showtime announced that it had ordered a full season of the sequel to The L Word. The show is scheduled to air at the end of 2019, with Chaiken taking on an overseeing role because of her exclusive deal with Fox.

Chaiken was born in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania to a Jewish family. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with an undergraduate degree in graphic design in 1979.

Ilene Chaiken (born June 30, 1957) is an American television producer, director, writer, and founder of Little Chicken Productions. Chaiken is best known as being the co-creator, writer and executive producer of the television series The L Word and is currently an executive producer on the hit television series Empire.