Clifton Todd Britt was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After attending Morristown High School, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia for two years, but he graduated from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences with a double degree in History and African-American studies in 1993.

Steele has said that his stage name came about back during the days when he worked as a stockbroker when he took the subway to visit a client (at that time, he had already decided to move in the adult film industry and use the last name Steele), who was located in Midtown Manhattan and, Steele said, "I got off the subway at Madison [Avenue], [...] on the corner of Madison and Lexington Avenues" [sic], where he was struck by the sound of Lexington as a first name. In April 2001, he started appearing in adult movies in New York City. He got his earliest exposure appearing in the interracial amateur productions of Lynn Carroll, an over 40 Milf and frequent co-star with Steele. Steele moved to Los Angeles and joined the industry full-time in August 2001, initially shooting mainly for companies such as West Coast Productions and Director Spunky, before appearing on videotapes produced by Anabolic and Diabolic. At the beginning of 2008, he joined Red Light District Video for a brief period.

Steele was engaged to porn Actress and Director Vanessa Blue from 2004–2006 and the two have appeared together on Playboy TV (in his two-season show Lex in the City) and in several movies, before they ended their relationship in June 2006.

Steele has worked as a model on the side and acted in minor TV roles. He appeared in two episodes of Showtime's Weeds in 2007 (3x07 "He taught me how to drive by" and 3x08 "The two Mrs. Scottsons") playing himself at a movie shoot filming a scene with Jessica Jaymes and Kirsten Price. He appeared in the 2009 feature film Crank: High Voltage and also appeared in an episode of the FX series Nip/Tuck (5x05 "Chaz Darling") as a male escort at a party.

During his time studying African-American studies, Steele developed an awareness of American politics and African-American rights, while in 2008 he expressed his support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

In a 2015 interview in AVN magazine, Steele commented about his transition into the adult industry, "Once I was licensed, it opened the door to a whole new recreational side of the industry. The guy who trained me invited me to a party in a hotel suite, and it ended up being a sex party like the ones in [the film] Wolf of Wall Street. It wasn't long before a bigger Director from Los Angeles gave me a job and suggested I attend the annual porn industry convention in Las Vegas" and with regard to his decision to switch careers and industries and in consideration for how lucrative securities trading can be, Steele stated, "I tell them it's not like I was already a master of the universe. I was working 12 to 14 hours six days a week. I made six figures, but my quality of life wasn't commensurate".

As of February 2016, he was married to French-Canadian adult film Actress Savana Styles.