She was the founder and manager of Salmbergska flickpensionen ('Salmberg Pension for Girls'), one of the most famed and fashionable educational institutions for females in Finland in her time.
Anna Salmberg was born in Denmark but was raised in the Danish Caribbean, where English became her first language.
She married the Finnish sea captain Arvid Abraham Salmberg (d. 1809), and moved with him to Finland.
Since the foundation of the Christina Krook school in the 1780s, there had been a few private girls' schools in Finland, which remained the only secondary education available for females in Finland until the foundation of the Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Åbo and Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Helsingfors (1844).
[1] Her most known students were the writer Fredrika Runeberg and the poet Augusta Lundahl, both of whom studied at her school in 1824–1825.