After a loveless, abusive, year-long prearranged marriage to Hungarian noblewoman Zofia, 15th-century nobleman Vlad Dracula banished Zofia and their infant daughter, Lilith. Zofia killed herself after paying the wizened Gypsy Gretchin to raise the child. Years later, the now vampiric Dracula slew Gretchin's son, Arni, and Gretchin magically transformed Lilith into an adult vampire, further empowering her to torment Dracula eternally. After many conflicts, Dracula impaled Lilith in the 20th century, but she was soon reborn. Lilith learned to control her vampiric lusts, targeting those deserving death, though when she spared loser Horace Morton Biggotty V she wondered if she had done him any favors. Lilith was destroyed by Quincy Harker and reborn through human host Angel O'Hara, whose father had killed her fiancé, and she lived a dual existence in Greenwich Village for a time. While Angel fell in love with writer Martin Gold, Lilith encountered the insane "sex crime" killer, drug dealers, the murdering "Nobody Anybody Knows," Kallen Chemical Works, and disco king T.J. Novello and jealous girlfriend Della Fiorelli. When Dracula was turned human by Mephisto, he sought Lilith to make him a vampire anew, but she instead tried to kill him.

Dracula became a vampire again, and Lilith sought out Gretchin's descendent Viktor Benzel, who separated Lilith and Angel. Lilith then attempted to destroy Dracula, who instead slew her lover Viktor; he then mocked her inability to kill him herself. While seeking Viktor's brother Karl, hoping to find a way to kill Dracula, she solved the murders of the insane gardener Siegfried. Lilith possessed X-Man Kitty Pryde in a failed effort against her father, but she died happily when the Montesi Formula later destroyed both her and Dracula; however, when Dracula was reborn, so was she. Consumed by bloodlust, she sought Brother Voodoo's aid, encountering Ghost Rider (Dan Ketch) and Scarecrow (Ebenezer Laughton), and then used the Zombie to bring her fresh blood for a vampire army, meeting defeat from Spider-Man and Hannibal King. Regaining control, Lilith employed Dr. Charles Seward and Anton Florescu to infect Dracula with a lethal virus. Though Dracula survived, Lilith was pleased that he had to sink to drinking the blood of a corpse to do so.