Kathy Hilton was born Lorna Margaret Fern. Hilton eventually moved to Seattle, Washington, where she worked as a keypunch operator before being promoted to supervisor. However, Kathy was bored with her job so she quit and moved with a girlfriend to Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles, Hilton applied at the Pretty Girl International agency and had her picture taken. Kathy began her career in the entertainment industry as a nude model, and she won the Miss Nude Cosmos pageant in 1972. Hilton appeared in her first softcore movie in the late 1960s and continued to work steadily in low-budget sexploitation fare up until the mid-1970s.

Tragically, she was shot by a then-boyfriend Grover Moran in 1974 who then subsequently committed suicide. She survived, but suffered from lifelong seizures as a result. The police claimed the shooting was a suicide pact to the media which lead to rumors that she was dead. The seizures caused the end of Kathy's film and modeling career. She passed away in 2015 in Port Angeles, Washington from cancer.