A profile for the British Film Institute said "of all the Rank Organisation's starlets, Belinda Lee stands out as the most notorious, yet paradoxically anonymous, British Actress of the 1950s."

She was married to the Photographer Cornel Lucas from 1954 until 1959.

Rank finally gave Lee a good chance, casting her as a nurse in a medical drama The Feminine Touch (1956). She followed this with a crime drama The Secret Place (1957) and Miracle in Soho (1957), the latter written by Emeric Pressburger. She was an aristocrat helping Louis Jourdan in Dangerous Exile (1957), during the filming of which she was injured when her hair caught fire.

She returned to Rank to make Nor the Moon by Night (1957) which was shot on location in South Africa. During filming, Lee left to go to Italy to visit her married lover. Italian newspapers reported that Lee had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Three days later, papal Prince Filippo Orsini, who had been linked to her by the papers, was reported to have been hospitalised after slashing his wrists. Police refused to comment on the newspaper reports linking the two romantically. Orsini, whose injuries were light, refused to tell the police why he had done it. Lee said that she had been suffering from insomnia and had taken an overdose by mistake. Both were married to others at the time. The Vatican said that Orsini would lose his title if it were proven that he had attempted suicide, and indeed the Pope did remove Orsini and the Orsini family from their hereditary title of Prince Assistant to the Papal Throne.

In Italy, Lee starred in The Magliari (1959), directed by Francesco Rosi. She went to Germany for Love Now, Pay Later (1959) and France for Les Dragueurs (1959) and Marie of the Isles (1959). In Italy she did Long Night in 1943 (1960) and played the title role in Messalina (1960) and Cornel Wilde's love interest in Constantine and the Cross (1961). Her last film was the Biblical epic The Story of Joseph and His Brethren (1961).

In 1961, Belinda Lee died in a car accident near San Bernardino, California, on her way to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, where she had been acting in a film. Her ashes are kept at Campo Cestio Cemetery (Cimitero acattolico) in Rome, Italy.

The 1963 semi-documentary Italian film The Women of the World was dedicated to Lee (who had died two years previously), with a written announcement at the start of the film (which interrupts the title music): To Belinda Lee, who throughout this long journey accompanied and helped us with love.