During World War II Brett's parents Max and Rose survived six years in the ?ód? ghettos in Poland, before being taken to Auschwitz concentration camp where they were eventually separated. It took them six months to find each other again after the war ended in 1945. Brett was born in a displaced persons' camp in Germany in 1946. She was aged two (1948) before her parents were able to leave Germany and emigrate to Melbourne, Australia.

By the mid-1960s, Brett was a young journalist working with Molly Meldrum at Go-Set, Australia's most renowned music magazine of the time, and on Uptight one of the first weekly TV shows devoted to pop music. In the summer of 1967, Brett, then 19, travelled to America to cover the Monterey International Pop Festival, then onto the U.K., before returning to Australia.

In 1989 Brett moved to New York City with her second husband, painter David Rankin, and her three children.

In 2006, Lily Brett appeared on ABC's Foreign Correspondent program.

Fiction

• Things Could Be Worse (1990)
• What God Wants (1992)
• Just Like That (1994) Macmillan Australia ISBN 9780732907945
• Collected Stories (1999)
• Too Many Men (1999) Macmillan Australia ISBN 9780330361392
• You Gotta Have Balls (2005) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330421966

Non-fiction

• In Full View (1997) Macmillan Australia ISBN 9780732908959
• New York (2001) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330362450
• Between Mexico and Poland (2002) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330363860

Poetry

• The Auschwitz Poems (1986) Scribe ISBN 9780908011100
• Poland and other Poems (1987)
• After the War (1990)
• Unintended Consequences (1992)
• In Her Strapless Dresses(1994) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330355896
• Mud in My Tears (1997) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330360111
• Poems by Lily Brett (2001) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330362917
• Blistered Days (2007) Picador Australia ISBN 9780330422871

• 1986 - Mattara Poetry Prize - "Poland"
• 1987 - Victorian Premier's Literary Awards: C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry - The Auschwitz Poems
• 1987 - Commonwealth Writers' Prize Award in 2000 for the Best Book from the South-East Asia and South Pacific Region- Too Many Men

• 1992 - National Steel Award for What God Wants
• 1995 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards,Christina Steadman Prize for Fiction for Just Like That
• 2000 - Too Many Men shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award