Jenni was born and raised in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. She received her BA in Film Studies from the University of Minnesota in 1990. She was the founder of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Lesbian, Gay, Bi, & Transgender Film Festival in 1986 and went on to be co-director (with Mark Finch) of the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival from 1992-1994.

Jenni is one of the world's leading experts on GLBTQ cinema; the director of entertainment and e-commerce for PlanetOut.com and Gay.com, and the founding producer of PlanetOut's PopcornQ, a massive film website based on her book, The Ultimate Guide to Lesbian & Gay Film and Video; also a consulting programmer to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Lesbian, Gay, Bi & Transgender Film Festival.

Her feature-length collections of coming attractions trailers - Homo Promo (1991), Neo Homo Promo (1993), and Trailer Camp (1995) - have played at film festivals around the world, as have her two short videos (Levi's 501s Commercial and Sometimes).