She grew up in Weimar under the influence of a circle of artists and scholars who gathered in the literary salon run by her mother, but she received no formal education.

This incident led to a further deterioration of the relationship between the two women and Arthur, because they repeatedly sent him letters, in vain, asking him to approve the settlement.

Muhl, who was considered a shrewd tactician, tried till the end to get Arthur to agree to a settlement with the generous offer of a 70% asset return plus a flock of sheep.

Although Johanna could make some earnings through her writing career and Adele retained some residual assets because she was protected in part by her immaturity, the lifestyle of the Schopenhauer women in the 1820s was very different from that of earlier years.

After her mother's death in 1838, Schopenhauer travelled a lot, mostly to Italy, until she finally returned to Bonn, seriously ill, where she died in 1849 and was buried on Goethe's 100th birthday.

Four days after Schopenhauer's funeral, Mertens-Schaaffhausen held a private memorial service, following a pattern from classical antiquity, in her garden on Wilhelmstraße.