[1][2] Her father was Janez Nepomuk Baraga, a minor noble and the caretaker of Mirna Castle [sl], and her mother was Marija Katarina Jožefa.

[2][3] Following the deaths of her parents in 1812, Baraga, her brother Frederic, and her sister Amalija, were adopted by prominent Ljubljana lawyer Jurij Dolinar [sl], who was a family friend, and his wife Ana.

[1] According to the Slovenian Biographical Lexicon [sl], she later became engaged to Matija Čop, a prominent writer, but he died after drowning in the Sava River on 6 July 1835.

In 1837, while her brother was visiting Slovenia, Höffern decided to join him in America; she is considered to be the first Slovenian woman to immigrate to the United States.

Travelling via Paris and New York, the siblings first moved to Mackinac Island in Michigan, and later to La Pointe in Wisconsin, embedding themselves with the Ojibwe.

[1][3] During this period, she wrote several letters to her sister Amalija:[11] We left New York on the 5th of July and came to the glorious Hudson River with its friendly banks, where the wealthy New Yorkers have set up their docks, which surpass each other by different syllables.

With the assistance of academics I. C. Oehlschlager and Charles Minnigerode, Höffern established an elite girls' school in the city, the Ladies' Institute.