Born in the village of Ljutovnica near Gornji Milanovac to a Royal Yugoslav Air Force officer father Božidar Otašević and mother Olga, young Ljubica grew up in Belgrade with a younger brother Duda. Their father was among the Yugoslav airmen that defended the country in April 1941 during the German invasion before getting captured by the invading Germans and taken to a Nazi concentration camp in Osnabrück where he was imprisoned until the end of World War II. In the meantime, her mother Olga had left the family so that young Ljubica and her brother were raised by their grandmother Danica in Deligradska Street in Belgrade. Following the war, due to his royalist worldview, their father Božidar was unwilling to return home to Yugoslavia that had in the meantime become a communist people's republic. Otašević could thus only meet with her father abroad, which was further made difficult by FPR Yugoslavia's strict exit criteria. Still, she did manage to see him twice, in 1953 and 1954, in Italy and France, respectively, while playing in basketball tournaments with her club.