Françoise Mallet-Joris

As a teenager, Lilar was quite rebellious, and desperately sought her independence from her parents. To defy them, she began dating an older man, playwright Louis Decreux. When her parents found out, they sent her to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, but it didn't last long. To further annoy her parents, she married a Yale graduate student, Robert Amadou in 1948. The same year, Lilar gave birth to their son, Daniel Amadou. Robert Amadou was French, and through him, Lilar gained French citizenship. After obtaining that, Lilar and Amadou divorced.

During her time in Paris, Lilar attended the Sorbonne. Around this time, Lilar and her parents reconciled their relationship.

Lilar began her literary career with the publication of Le rempart des Béguines in 1951. She published under the name Françoise Mallet to avoid embarrassing her family, due to the novel's scandalous (lesbian) content. Later on in her career, however, she altered her penname to Françoise Mallet-Joris so as not to be confused with Robert Mallet. Le rempart des Béguines was translated and published in America as The Illusionist and later on it was reprinted under the titles Into the Labyrinth and The Loving and the Daring. It is set in a town that resembles Mallet-Joris' native Antwerp and addresses the themes of social class and lesbianism. She followed her first work with a sequel in 1955 named La chambre rouge, in English; The Red Room. In it, she focused less on lesbian themes but continued her treatment of social class and norms in Belgium.

Lilar became quite a prominent literary and public figure in France. As her career progressed, she mostly abandoned her Belgian roots, instead opting for a very Parisian career.