"[10] The first informal Friends of Lulu meeting[11] — a brunch at the 1993 edition of WonderCon, in Oakland, California — was attended by Robbins, MacDonald, Loubert, Bennett, Schiller, and Estrada.

[5] Friends of Lulu was officially formed in 1994;[12] co-founder Trina Robbins recalls that a Cherry Poptart lookalike contest sponsored by Comic-Con International was the "last straw" that inspired the creation of the organization.

[19] In the spring of 2006, in the wake of revelations of a sexual assault that happened at a 2005 comic convention, FoL vice president Ronée Garcia Bourgeois announced the creation of a Friends of Lulu Women's Empowerment Fund.

The fund was "intended to give victims of sexual assault or harassment in a comics-industry context the strength to fight back legally if not physically."

[21][22] The public failure of the Empowerment Fund was difficult for Friends of Lulu, and by the fall of 2007, the presidency of the organization was vacant.

In September 2007, Valerie D'Orazio volunteered to fill the empty president of the national board of directors of Friends of Lulu.

These creators have more avenues available to them — webcomics, book publisher graphic novel contracts, online organization and support — and a formal group may seem old-fashioned.Heidi MacDonald added: ...the world that FoL was created to confront doesn't exist anymore.

The ’90s were a period when women had been driven out of the medium, for the most part....[31]In 2019, a commemorative panel on Friends of Lulu was held at the 50th San Diego Comic-Con, with Jackie Estrada, Heidi MacDonald, Lee Marrs, Liz Schiller, Trina Robbins, and Anina Bennett serving on the panel, which was moderated by Alexa Dickman of Ladies Making Comics.