From the late 1970s onwards, Michael Cretu already had his own music career on his hands and apart from some collaboration efforts with several other musicians, he also produced his wife's albums.

Before Enigma, he released a number of albums under his own name, but none of them sold particularly well. Cretu revealed in an interview that he believed that his ideas were running out at that point.

In December 1990, after 8 months of preparation, Cretu released Enigma's debut album, the groundbreaking MCMXC a.D. that received over 60 platinum awards worldwide. The album was Cretu's first commercial success through the single Sadeness (Part I), which juxtaposed Gregorian chants and sexual overtones over a dance beat that was highly peculiar to the ears of the public at that time.

Cretu explained that the album was about unsolved crimes and philosophical themes such as life after death, hence the name Enigma. He had previously used a Gregorian-type chant on the opening seconds of Sandra's 1987 single "Everlasting Love", without integrating them into other parts of the song.

"Sadeness" quickly rose to the top of the charts in Germany and France; it went on to become an almost worldwide hit. Later Cretu would claim that the now signature Enigma sound was inspired after falling asleep on the London Underground.

Before the album was released, Cretu was cautious of the response towards the upcoming album, decided to forgo mentioning his and most of the personnel's real name and credited himself as Curly M.C., while the album sleeve contained little information about the background of the project, furthering the mystery about the creators of the album and leading to speculation whether Enigma was a band, a person or a group.

In 1993, Cretu was given an offer by producers to compose the full soundtrack of the motion picture Sliver but he was unable to accept the offer. Instead, he came up with "Carly's Song" ("Age of Loneliness" in the album and video releases) and "Carly's Loneliness", which was used in the movie and credited in the motion picture soundtrack as well.

In the same year, The Cross of Changes was released and it received about the same, if not an even larger and better response from the public (it sold 6 million copies in a year). However, both of the albums also hitched up lawsuits over the issue of sampling from other music sources.

In 1996, Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! (French for "The King is dead, long live the King!") was released. Cretu's idea was that this third album was the child of the previous two albums, and therefore included familiar elements of Gregorian chants and tribal chants in it.

Though the album was as meticulously crafted by Cretu as the earlier two albums, it failed to achieve the same level of success that they enjoyed. As a result only two of the three singles originally slated were released, with the third one ("The Roundabout") being silently cancelled in 1998.