[2] Archduchess Margaretha was born on 8 May 1894 at Lemberg, Galicia, (modern day Lviv, in western Ukraine), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Called "Meg" within her family, she received the name Margarethe in honor of her maternal grandmother, Princess Margherita of Bourbon-Parma, who had died a year earlier.

[5] During World War I, Margaretha's father was inspector general of artillery and her eldest brother, Archduke Rainier joined the Austrian army to fight in the Italian front.

[7] Margaretha's two eldest brothers, Archdukes Rainer and Leopold, decided to remain in Austria and recognized the new republic.

The unleash of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 forced Archduchess Margaretha, her mother and her unmarried siblings to leave Spain.

The wedding took place on 27 November 1937 at Schloss Sonnberg, property of her brother Archduke Anton and his wife Princess Ileana of Romania.

When, in September 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allied forces, Archduchess Margaretha and her husband were detained and interned in a Japanese concentration camp until the summer of 1945.

In her widowhood Archduchess Margaretha lived between Rome and la Tenuata reale, a rural property near Viareggio that she shared with her sisters Dolores and Immaculata.

At her death in Rome on 21 June 1986, at age 92, she bequested la Tenuata reale to the commune of Viareggio to serve as public and cultural center.