She is the author of several books including Eve's Hollywood, Slow Days, Fast Company, Sex and Rage, Two By Two, L.A. Woman, and Black Swans.
She began her career at Atlantic Records designing album covers for musicians like Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Her most famous cover was a collage for the 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again.
Her articles and short stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines.
Her first brush with notoriety came through Julian Wasser's iconic 1963 photograph of a nude, 20-year-old Babitz playing chess with the artist Marcel Duchamp on the occasion of his landmark retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum.
Attended Hollywood High School.
Her father was of Russian Jewish descent and her mother had Cajun (French) ancestry.