Lilith Norman's earliest success was winning third prize in a newspaper poetry competition when she was eighteen (for 'The Colour of Sorrow: A Lament for the Aborigines'). She worked as a library assistant, then a bookshop assistant, before travelling overseas. She returned to formal library training and work, which led to her appointment as Children's Librarian at Sydney Public Library from 1966 to 1970.
In 1970, Norman joined the editorial staff of the New South Wales School Magazine under Patricia Wrightson and took over as editor when Wrightson retired in 1975. In 1978, Norman started writing in a full-time capacity. In addition to works individually indexed on AustLit, she has also written The Brown and Yellow: Sydney Girls' High School 1883-1983 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983).
Norman died in Naremburn in December 2017: her obituary described her as ' writer, mentor, activist'.