The city of Lauderhill was originally going to be named "Sunnydale", but William Safire, a friend of the developer, convinced him to change his mind. Safire felt that "Sunnydale" sounded like a neighborhood in Brooklyn. A discussion between the two ensued. The developer stated that there were no hills in the new town, to which Safire replied, "There are probably no dales in Lauderdale, either!" From that discussion, the name "Lauderhill" was coined.

In 1970, the Inverrary Country Club was built, and in 1972 its golf course became home to the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic. Gleason himself built his final home on the golf course. Up until the late 1980s-early 1990s, Lauderhill was mostly a retirement community for Jewish people and a second home for snowbirds (especially in the Inverrary neighborhood).

It is now home to mostly West Indians and African Americans, but it still has a sizeable white, Jewish, and Hispanic population in the Northwest section, and in the Inverrary neighborhood, located north of Oakland Park Boulevard and west of University Drive.