Archduchess Maria Anna (known as Marianna) was born on 6 October 1738 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, the center of the Habsburg monarchy.

As the second but eldest surviving daughter of Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, she was heiress presumptive of the hereditary lands of the Austrian Habsburgs between 1740 and 1741, until her younger brother Joseph (later to be the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II) was born.

Although she survived, her breathing capacity was permanently damaged, and she also developed a fusion of her spine which caused her to have a lump on her back.

Despite being disabled, Maria Anna often played important roles in major events of state, including acting as sponsor at the christening of her youngest sister Marie Antoinette.

They halted in Klagenfurt, where Maria Anna visited the small monastery that belonged to the Order of Saint Elisabeth, established there in 1710.

Thea Leitner explains that the Archduchess became enthusiastic for the monastic life because the nuns did not care about appearances and Maria Anna always lived with the fear of being ridiculed because of her hump.

Despite the opposition of her mother, she decided to give up the Prague position and became an abbess in Klagenfurt with a smaller provision.

To the abbess of the convent, she wrote: During the time prior to her final move to Klagenfurt, Maria Anna completed her father's coin collection (which later became part of the Vienna Museum of Natural History) with the help of her mentor Ignaz von Born, and established her own mineral and insect collection.

Her friends were nuns, artists, scientists, and nobles, including the Carinthian iron industrialist Maximilian Thaddäus von Egger.

Reportedly, her last words were: Maria Anna left her entire inheritance (amounting to more than 150,000 guilders) to the monastery of Klagenfurt.