At a court in Darmstadt, the 28-year-old singer from the girl group No Angels told her infected former boyfriend: "I am sorry from the bottom of my heart."
Her five-day trial is likely to set new standards in dealing with celebrities and to raise legal questions about determining responsibility for the consequences of unprotected sex.
Benaissa was arrested last year and charged with causing grievous bodily harm by having unprotected sex while knowingly suffering from HIV. She faces up to 10 years in jail.
It is not clear how Benaissa contracted AIDS. In a statement, she said: "I had been told that there was an almost zero possibility of infecting anybody or of full-blown AIDS breaking out.
"So I didn't tell my friends. I didn't want my daughter to be stigmatised."
She did, however, tell her fellow band members, who have been called as witnesses. No Angels have been hailed as the most successful girl band in continental Europe, with four No 1 singles and three No 1 albums.
According to the state prosecutor, Benaissa was told of her HIV infection in 1999. She was 17 at the time and is, therefore, being tried by a youth court.
In a television interview in July last year, the singer, who admitted being addicted to crack cocaine when she was 14, talked about living with being HIV positive. "I can't just go anywhere I like and be free and be a normal person. I now have this stamp," she said. "I am actually completely healthy, not sick."
She allegedly slept with three men on at least five occasions between 2000 and 2004 without making her condition known.
One of them, a 34-year-old former boyfriend, was infected in 2004 and was in court as a co-plaintiff. Her defence team will suggest there is no way of establishing whether the virus was passed to the former boyfriend by Benaissa or another of his sexual partners.
AIDS campaigners say it was not the singer's sole responsibility to ensure her partners used protection. "I would like to know from the prosecutor the exact scope of a man's responsibility when conducting unprotected sex," Gisela Friedrichsen, of Der Spiegel magazine, said.
German law considers failure to disclose HIV before sex a crime, but intention to harm must be proven. The verdict is due on August 26.
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