TITLE: Density of a dense subspace of a Hausdorff space
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: If X is a Hausdorff space and Y is a dense subspace of X, can the density of Y exceed the density of X? The density of a space X is the least infinite cardinal C such that X has a dense set of cardinal C or less.

REPLY [3 votes]: See the following paper: 
R. Levy, R.H. McDowell, 
Dense subsets of X.
Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 50 (1975), 426-430. 
http://www.ams.org/journals/proc/1975-050-01/S0002-9939-1975-0370506-8/S0002-9939-1975-0370506-8.pdf
From the introduction: "... use this 
result to obtain a nonseparable space $X$ such that $\beta X$ is separable." 
Since $X$ is dense in $\beta X$, the above result  shows that you could have a separable space, namely $\beta X$, and a non-separable dense subset, namely $X$. 
I got to this reference after I got first to a paper 
by J Talponen - ‎2015,
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.06080.pdf
when I googled:
increasing density of dense subsets
and looked at the first couple of pages.  
Levy and McDowell also describe a more standard example, 5.3.
Let $X$ be the product of continuum many copies of the closed unit interval $[0,1]$. Let $Y$ be the subspace of $X$ of functions $f$ that take value $0$ at all but finitely many coordinates. (I think this is known as $\sigma$-product, may try to find another reference ... enclosed some links in a comment. $X$ is separable by the Hewitt-Marczewski-Pondiczery theorem.) Then $Y$ is dense in $X$, but is not separable.