Raised in Englewood, New Jersey, and later New York City, Anne Morrow graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1928.

Following the 1932 kidnapping and murder of their first-born infant child, Anne and Charles moved to Europe in 1935 to escape the American press and hysteria surrounding the case, where their views shifted during the preliminary time of World War II towards an alleged sympathy for Nazi Germany and a concern for the United States' ability to compete with Germany in the war with their opposing air power.

Her mother, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, was a poet and teacher, active in women's education,[3] who served as acting president of her alma mater Smith College.

She would write in her diary: He is taller than anyone else—you see his head in a moving crowd and you notice his glance, where it turns, as though it were keener, clearer, and brighter than anyone else's, lit with a more intense fire.... What could I say to this boy?

[13][4][14] That same year, Anne Lindbergh flew solo for the first time and in 1930 she became the first American woman to earn a first-class glider pilot's license.

[a] Local police began their first search outside the Lindbergh home and found two clear sets of footprints, one leading southeast towards a ladder believed to have been used in the abduction.

Corporal Frank Kelly, an expert in crime-scene photography and fingerprints, was part of the group investigating the child's disappearance.

[21] The press paid frenzied attention to the Lindberghs after the kidnapping of their son and the trial, conviction, and execution of Richard Hauptmann for the crime.

This—and threats and press harassment of their second son Jon—prompted the family to retreat to the United Kingdom, to a house called Long Barn owned by Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and later to the small island of Illiec, off the coast of Brittany in France.

[22] While in Europe during the 1930s, the Lindberghs came to advocate isolationist views and an opposition to American involvement in the impending European conflict, which led to their fall from grace in the eyes of many and widespread suspicion that the couple might be Nazi sympathizers.

Because of his outspoken beliefs about a future war that would envelop their homeland, the antiwar America First Committee quickly adopted Charles as its leader in 1940.

[28] The Roosevelt administration subsequently attacked The Wave of the Future as, in an April 1941 speech by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, "the bible of every American Nazi, Fascist, Bundist and Appeaser", and the booklet became one of the most despised writings of the period;[29][30][31] in December 1940, E.B.

"[32] Anne had also written in a letter that Hitler was "a very great man, like an inspired religious leader—and as such rather fanatical—but not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power".

[30] After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war against the U.S., the America First Committee disbanded, and Charles eventually managed to become involved in the military and enter combat only as a civilian consultant, flying 50 missions in this role and even shooting down an enemy aircraft.

[33][34] In this period, Anne met the French writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the novella The Little Prince.

The publication of Gift from the Sea in 1955 earned her place as "one of the leading advocates of the nascent environmental movement" and became a national bestseller.

[38] Over the course of their 45-year marriage, the Lindberghs lived in New Jersey, New York, the United Kingdom, France, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland, and Hawaii.

[41] After suffering a series of strokes that left her confused and disabled in the early 1990s, Anne continued to live in her home in Connecticut with the assistance of round-the-clock caregivers.

The following year, she was awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society for having completed 40,000 miles (64,000 km) of exploratory flying with her husband, Charles Lindbergh, a feat that took them to five continents.