Hera Lilith Hoffer (born September 18, 1987), best known by the stage name Jinkx Monsoon, is an American drag queen, actress, singer and comedian, best-known for winning the fifth season (2013) of RuPaul's Drag Race, as well as the All-Winners seventh season of All-Stars, becoming the first queen to win two crowns on the show. She made her Broadway debut in 2023 and has appeared in character roles on television and in cabaret.

Nine years after her first win on RuPaul's Drag Race, in 2022, she returned as part of an all-winners All Stars season, featuring a mixture of crowned queens from several seasons competing against one another for the title of "Queen of All Queens" and a $200,000 prize. Monsoon placed first, becoming the first two-time winner of the show across its many global franchises. Throughout her drag career, she has been noted for her wit and comedic timing, her musical theatre-inspired performances, and for celebrity impersonations, including Judy Garland, Edie "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale, and Natasha Lyonne.

She has also pursued a career in music, releasing two studio albums titled The Inevitable Album (2014) and The Ginger Snapped (2018). She has appeared in cabaret acts. In film, Monsoon appeared with her collaborative and touring partner BenDeLaCreme in the holiday film The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special (2021) which was later released on Hulu. On television, Monsoon appears in the WOW Presents Plus original Sketchy Queens, a series she created alongside Liam Krug, and the BBC series Doctor Who as the villain Maestro. In 2023 she made her Broadway debut in Chicago as "Mama" Morton, continued in musical theatre as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors in New York and, in 2025, made a Carnegie Hall debut and returned to Broadway in Pirates! The Penzance Musical.

Hoffer was born in an Irish Catholic household on September 18, 1987, in Portland, Oregon and raised in an unstable environment. Her father, 17 when Hoffer was born, grew up in a group home and was absent during her childhood. Her mother Deanne Hoffer, was a heavy alcoholic, leaving Hoffer at age 12 to take on a parental role for her younger siblings. She described her mother as "a woman who wasn't ready to be a mom." Her mother is intersex and has an underdeveloped testicle. She has two younger brothers and a half-sister.

Hoffer came out as gay at age 13. She first performed in drag when she was 15 years old, at the all-ages Escape Nightclub under the name Heidi Destruction. She later took the stage surname Monsoon after Edina Monsoon from the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. Hoffer attended da Vinci Arts Middle School and Grant High School. She worked as a janitor through college and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater from Cornish College of the Arts in 2010.

Hoffer learned she was of partial Ashkenazi ancestry as a teenager; after her maternal grandmother, Judith Irwin-Hoffer, died in 2008 from complications of a stroke, she learned Judith was born to Jewish parents of Polish and Finnish descent and had been adopted by an Irish Catholic couple. Hoffer initially told The Times of Israel she was of Russian Jewish ancestry. Hoffer has said that she uses Jinkx Monsoon as a way to connect to her Jewish heritage, describing the character as a "failed Jewish actress who became every gay boy's favorite cabaret act."

After moving to Seattle from Portland, Hoffer and creative partner Nick Sahoyah wrote and starred in multiple Funny or Die webisodes titled Monsoon Season in which she played Jinkx Monsoon as an overbearing, substance addled, near-psychotic mother to Sahoyah's character, Kamikaze Monsoon. In 2011, Hoffer appeared in the Wes Hurley film Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel.

In June 2011, Hoffer became the subject of a YouTube docu-series by Alex Berry, a Seattle videographer. Named after Death Becomes Her, one of Jinkx's favorite movies, Drag Becomes Him explores Hoffer's life in and out of drag.