This feature appears in the April issue of AVN magazine.
LOS ANGELES—Lucy Mochi was 19 and had already made more money in one month on OnlyFans than she could earn across all three of her traditional jobs combined. And she hadn’t even shown her face. A Texas transplant from China, Mochi was a biochemistry major at the University of Texas at Austin. A sophomore on track to graduate early, she juggled multiple gigs while pursuing her degree—waiting tables, working at the student call center, and contributing as an undergraduate researcher in a lab.
“I was working in a lab killing shrimp and extracting their DNA,” she recalled. “It was research on how environmental factors in the Gulf of Mexico were affecting these generations of shrimp. I was enrolled in ecology, organic chemistry, plant physiology—just about any biology and chemistry class that you can imagine.”
Raised by academically focused parents, she graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and set out to become a scientist.
“I’m Asian. My parents were always like, ‘you’re going to be a scientist or a doctor,” Mochi reflected. “So that was the path I was on. I felt like I wanted to be a scientist because I didn’t know anything else.”
She watched as graduate students sank into debt, struggling to make ends meet while pursuing their PhDs, and thought, “I can’t do this.” Meanwhile, in her free time, she scrolled through subreddits “gooning” over the pretty girls she saw, eventually having an epiphany, “What’s stopping me from doing that?”
Mochi posted faceless nudes of herself on the platform and, by the next day, was inundated with requests for custom content and her OnlyFans page.
She remembered, “I was hoping that I could make money from it, but had no idea it would pop off. They were shitty nudes. I had an ancient phone. Horrible lighting. I did very casual girl-next-door nudes in my dorm—flashing my tits while studying, eating lunch naked, stuff like that. After posting my first round of nudes, people started asking about my OnlyFans. I made one immediately and got 100 subscribers in my first week.”
Mochi quickly adapted to the platform, engaging with fans while sharing exclusive content and preserving her anonymity. “I think a lot of people liked the mystery—a girl they don’t know much about, but they see all her intimate moments. I feel like that was really what caused people to connect with me so deeply.”
By 2020, OnlyFans was experiencing a surge of new creators and subscribers, as the pandemic pushed more people online. Meanwhile, the rise of TikTok ushered in a new generation of content creators. With so many emerging creators, influencers, and performers—all striving for likes, shares, and monetization—Mochi decided it was time to show her face.
“It’s important to keep up with the times. About a year in, I made the jump and my income shot up immediately,” Mochi noted. “So many new, beautiful creators were showing their faces—and showing everything. TikTok and Instagram were popping off. It was a lot to get used to. I didn’t know how to do makeup! I never wore any in high school or college. Trying to figure that out was intense. There are probably early photos of me out there looking absolutely insane!”
Suddenly, as success loomed, Mochi grew anxious. “I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket,” she said. “I felt once I showed my face, I was officially saying goodbye to becoming a scientist. It was terrifying. I was concerned about the future.”
Unlike many teens who assume good things last forever, Mochi needed assurances.
“I wasn’t your average 19-year-old,” she said. “I didn’t spend money on vapes, drugs, and pretty things. I was careful to put it away. I wanted that OnlyFans money to last my whole life because it might prove challenging for me to go back to traditional careers after being blasted on the internet naked.”
Five years later, the now 24-year-old creator is having fun branching out into mainstream porn, making her debut for erotic sci-fi/fantasy studio Hentaied in February. “I’ve always been a fan of their creepy-crawly horror scenes and wanted to experience it for myself. There was no financial motivation for it. I shot a week’s worth of scenes in Budapest and decided to just go full blast. What an amazing introduction to mainstream!”
Mochi is now represented by the Spiegler Girls agency. No shrimp were harmed during this interview.
Photography by Jeff Koga
