The 'Big Little Lies' actress went to live with the 'Fly Away' rocker when she was 11 years old and she admitted his eye-catching outfits always attracted hoards of her classmates when he came to collect her at the end of the day.
She recalled: "He'd pick me up, and the entire school would flock to the parking lot.
"And he wasn't being subtle: He'd show up in a sports car and leather pants and a netted shirt.
"Like, 'Dude, can you just be low-key a little bit? Just a shirt that I can't see your nipples through would be so dope.' "
And perhaps if the 54-year-old singer had worn thicker clothing, he wouldn't have felt the need to flee New York when winter hit.
Recalling their brief stint living in the city, Zoë told Rolling Stone magazine: "Then winter hit, and my dad was like, 'It's so cold! Let's go to the Bahamas for a week!' So we went and just didn't come back. I fully didn't go to school for a month.
"I think he just didn't feel like dealing with [school]. We were staying with cousins, and I remember they had a VHS of that movie 'Houseguest', starring Sinbad. I literally just watched 'Houseguest' for a month. I don't know, dude. It was weird."
But Lenny insisted he made the move for the sake of his daughter's health.
He explained: "The sun was going down early, and Zoë started to look really pasty and dry. I just felt like it wasn't healthy. So I took her to the sun."
The 'Divergent' star admitted it was "really hard" for her mother, actress Lisa Bonet, when she left their home to live with the 'American Woman' singer, but the former 'Cosby Show' star felt it was important for her daughter, now 29, to have a bond with her dad.
She said: "I think it was really hard for my mom. But it was also important to her that I knew him, because she and her father aren't close at all.
"That was a massive change. Going from this really quiet house in Topanga, just me and my mom, to my dad's life, which was very busy -- lots of people, lots of assistants."