Lillie May Hagner, painter, printmaker, author, illustrator and teacher, was born to Lilly and Frederick Hagner on 6 May 1906 in San Antonio, Texas. After high school, she completed a two-year teaching course at Baylor Female College in Belton, Texas (now Baylor University) followed by two years in New York studying at the Metropolitan School of Art. Hagner returned to San Antonio to teach in the public school system and continued her studies at the Witte Museum School Art. She was a member of the Coppini Academy, the San Antonio Conservation Society and the San Antonio Printmakers.

Lillie Hagner married Ben Saenger in 1945 and began to hyphenate her last name. She exhibited extensively in the San Antonio area in the 1930s and 1940s and two solo exhibitions of her work were mounted at the Witte Memorial Museum in 1936 and 1938. Hagner's engravings and drawings appear in her books, Alluring San Antonio Through the Eyes of an Artist (1940) & Touring Texas through the Eyes of an Artist, (1967).

Lillie May Hagner-Saenger died on 6 May 1985 in San Antonio, Texas.