She was the eighth child and fourth daughter of Isaak Herschel (1707–1767), a self-taught oboist, and his wife, Anna Ilse Moritzen (1710–1789).

He became ill after the Battle of Dettingen (in the War of the Austrian Succession) in 1743 and never recovered fully; he suffered a weak constitution, chronic pain, and asthma for the remainder of his life.

She married violinist Johann Heinrich Griesbach (1730–1773) when Caroline was five, which resulted in the younger girl being tasked with much of the household drudgery.

[10] At the age of ten Caroline was struck with a severe case of typhus, which so stunted her growth that she never grew more than 4 feet 3 inches (1.30 m) tall;[4] she also lost vision in her left eye as a result of the illness.

[10] Her family assumed that she would never marry and her mother thought better that she train to be a house servant[12] than be educated in accordance with her father's wishes.

[13] She also learned to play the harpsichord, and eventually became an integral part in William's musical performances at small gatherings.

[16] She became the principal singer at his oratorio concerts, and acquired such a reputation as a vocalist that she was offered an engagement for the Birmingham festival[17] after a performance of Handel's Messiah in April 1778, where she was the first soloist.

Caroline was subsequently replaced as a performer by distinguished soloists from outside the area because William wished to spend less time in rehearsals to focus on astronomy.

Caroline spent many hours polishing mirrors and mounting telescopes in order to maximize the amount of light captured.

[21] Caroline was asked to move from the high culture of Bath to the relative backwater of Datchet in 1782, a small town near Windsor Castle where William would be on hand to entertain royal guests.

[9][13] But it was not til the last two months of the same year before I felt the least encouragement for spending the starlight nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar frost without a human being near enough to be within call.

This was not a simple clerical task, however, because she would have to use John Flamsteed's catalogue to identify the star William used as a reference point for the nebulae.

In 1798 Caroline presented to the Royal Society an index to John Flamsteed's observations, together with a catalog of 560 stars omitted from the British Catalogue and a list of the errata in that publication.

A packet of paper bearing the superscription, "This is what I call the Bills and Receipts of my Comets" contains some data connected with the discovery of each of these objects.

[10] Caroline Herschel wrote a letter to the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne to announce the discovery of her second comet.

[13] When William married a rich widow, Mary Pitt (née Baldwin) in 1788, the union caused tension in the brother-sister relationship.

Caroline has been referred to as a bitter, jealous woman who worshipped her brother and resented those who invaded their domestic lives.

With the arrival of William's wife, Caroline lost her managerial and social responsibilities in the household and accompanying status.

In August 1799, Caroline was independently recognized for her work, when she spent a week in Greenwich as a guest of the royal family.

[34] Caroline made many discoveries independently of William and continued to work solo on many of the astronomical projects which contributed to her rise to fame.

[23] Toward the end of Caroline's life, she arranged 2,500 nebulae and star clusters into zones of similar polar distances so that her nephew, John Herschel, could re-examine them systematically.

[35] After her brother died in 1822, Caroline was grief-stricken and moved back to Hanover, Germany, continuing her astronomical studies to verify and confirm William's findings and producing a catalogue of nebulae to assist her nephew John Herschel in his work.

[36] Her nephew thought highly of her, in fact he was quoted in 1832 as saying “She runs about the town with me and skips up her two flights of stairs as wonderfully fresh at least as some folks I could name who are not a fourth of her age… In the morning till eleven or twelve she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite ‘fresh and funny’ at ten or eleven p.m. and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances to the great delight of all who see her."

Caroline continued to assist William with his observations but her status had greatly improved from the housekeeper she had been in her young days.

Caroline added her final entry to her observing book on 31 January 1824 about the Great Comet of 1823, which had already been discovered on 29 December 1823.

[23] Throughout the twilight of her life, Caroline remained physically active and healthy, and regularly socialized with other scientific luminaries.

[11] In 1846, at the age of 96, she was awarded a Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia, conveyed to her by Alexander von Humboldt, "in recognition of the valuable services rendered to Astronomy by you, as the fellow-worker of your immortal brother, Sir William Herschel, by discoveries, observations, and laborious calculations".

[43] Judy Chicago's 1969 artwork The Dinner Party, which celebrates historical women who have made extraordinary contributions, features a place setting for Caroline Herschel.

[46][47] In 2024, UK musician and singer-songwriter Jay Anderson released the single 'Moving' on Real Kind Records, a song dedicated to the life and times of Caroline Herschel.

He filmed a live acoustic version of the song at The Herschel Museum in Bath, sat in the old music room where Caroline and her brother used to rehearse for local concerts.