Tell you what I did, and what I think went wrong.
What I did:
Setting up Raspberry Pi headless way.
Downloaded Raspbian Lite version
Used etcher to write image to SD card
Added ssh to folder in SD card
Plugged in SD card, Ethernet cable and power cord
Found IP address of Raspberry Pi on router page.
SSH into Pi, logged in with default password
Downloaded RealVNC.
Changed settings in raspi-config boot to desktop with password
Used VNC to Pi, it connected
Asks for me to log in to the Pi, used default username, password
Screen turns black, and then goes back to the username password login page
What I think I did wrong: Is it possible to boot to desktop with the lite version?
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lxde
. That will install lxde, the default environment. However, it might not include the Raspberry Pi Foundation's user interface optimizations, so if that's important to you then you should probably just use the full version.