Lucy's loving mother unknowingly removes the garlic protecting her daughter, then dies when a wolf crashes through the bedroom window.
Mrs. Westenra shares Hillingham with her only daughter, Lucy Westenra, while secretly living under a physician's death sentence: any severe shock may stop her failing heart. To spare her, Van Helsing and John Seward conceal the true gravity and strange treatment of Lucy's condition.
Mistaking the strong-smelling Garlic Flowers for a health hazard, she removes them and opens the room, twice undoing Lucy's protection. On the unguarded final night she comes to comfort Lucy; Bersicker crashes through the window, and the shock kills her instantly. In death her grasp tears the wreath from Lucy's throat.
An older English gentlewoman with a drawn white face in death; her build, hair, coloring, and ordinary dress are not otherwise described.
Mrs. Westenra is a loving but fatally uninformed mother whose protective instincts repeatedly dismantle the safeguards she cannot be told are essential.