She was the daughter of Swedish architect Ivar Tengbom and his first wife, Hjördis Nordin (1877-1969).

[1] She attended school in Stockholm, where she was a classmate of Folk Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg.

[2] On 18 April 1928 she married German politician and diplomat Otto Christian Archibald, Prince of Bismarck, Head of the House of Bismarck, in a Lutheran ceremony at the Berlin Cathedral.

They had six children:[3] During the war, she and her husband moved into a villa in Rome, where she was known to have thrown parties for members of Italian and German high society.

[4] While her husband was a diplomat in Rome, the Princess told Filippo Anfuso, head of the Cabinet of Count Gian Galeazzo Ciano, "that Germany is lost, that Hitler has ruined the country and its people.