Lily Delissa Joseph (née Leah Alice Solomon) was born into a Jewish family in London, England in 1863; her brother was the artist Solomon J Solomon RA. She trained at the Ridley School of Art and the Royal Academy of Art, becoming a portrait, landscape and interior painter with a studio in Bedford Row overlooking the Old Bailey. She exhibited with the Society of Women Artists, the New English Art Club, the Women's International Art Club and at the Royal Academy (1905-38), as well as in the Paris Salons, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and Walker Gallery in Liverpool. Later, she became known for her experimentation and a limited palette of white, cobalt, rose madder, orange madder and black. Commited member of the women's suffrage movement and the Jewish community, she was involved in many charitable ventures. She was also well-known for her musical voice in the communal singing at the Brook Green synagogue in Hammersmith (having also been active in its establishment).
In 1924 she married the architect Delissa Joseph, F.R.I.B.A. (1859–1927) and exhibited her paintings alongside his drawings at the Suffolk Street Galleries in the same year. She outlived her husband by thirteen years and died in London, England in 1940. In 1946 Ben Uri held a joint exhibition of paintings by Solomon J. Solomon and Lily Delissa Joseph. Her work is represented in UK Collections including the Tate.
