She looks like his dead wife. So what?

No man, that is just YOUR interpretation.
I just rewarched that scene.
She says it is HIS VOICE causing all this.
It is like a familiar voice in a dream.
So she DREAMS of such a beautiful place with a happy princess dressed in white.

But in reality, we know instead that the princess killed herself, that she wore green, that Transilvania is gloomy and horrible.
My interpretation is that the absenthium and Dracula's voice and powers are charming her, giving her ideas that are in contrast with reality (which is shown in parallel almost debunking her feelings).
Later on she is so into this askewed taste that she embraces all sorts of disgusting crap that only Dracula finds normal. Again, nothing to do with Elisabeta, everything to do with her current state of mental subjugation to Dracula's powers.

I really do think that making Dracula into the anti-hero and a romantic figure is the easy way out, because it's much more difficult to make Mina, Jonathan, and Van Helsing* into genuine heroes, than it is to make Dracula sexy. I mean Jonathan spends a good chunk of the story as a prisoner and Mina is duped by Dracula in the original movie, and Van Helsing only comes in when the movie is half over, if you stick to the original story it's very difficult to make any or all of them into standard movie heroes. But if they aren't the heroes, then Dracula falls short of his real potential as a villain!

Bear with me as I discuss the opera I saw, "Don Giovanni", which is about the legendary "seducer" of women, known in English as Don Juan. Sometimes it's played with the women all willing and the Don being persecuted for offending the prudes, sometimes it's played with the women being willing and then changing their minds. But the best version I ever saw had a charismatic, sexy, good-looking guy as the Don (and he could really sing, too), and he played the legendary seducer as a straight-up sociopathic villainous rapist. It was genuinely disturbing, seeing this hot guy who could have almost any woman drop the charm and attempt a rape after a few minutes, because he'd rather rape a woman than keep talking.

And if vampires existed that's what they'd be like, they'd have no interest in their human victims, we'd just be food to them, and the only reason for a vampire to talk to one would be to get their guard down. That would be a hell of a lot scarier than any of the sexy vampires ever put on screen.

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* One of the things that I genuinely love about this version is that Van Helsing is played as a real nutter. I mean, if you think about it, he'd have to be.