Sophie Henriette was the daughter of Field Marshal Prince Georg Friedrich of Waldeck and his wife Countess Elisabeth Charlotte of Nassau-Siegen (1626–1694).

Sophie Henriette had a very close relationship with her eldest son Ernest Frederick I; she arranged his marriage to her first cousin once removed Countess Sophia Albertine of Erbach-Erbach.

Sophie Henriette died in 1702, ten days after her youngest son was born, before the wedding of Ernest Frederick and Sophia Albertine.

She was the first person to be buried in the Royal Crypt in the Palace Church in Hildburghausen.

Waldeck-Eisenberg fell to the Waldeck-Wildungen line; the Lordship of Culemborg in the Netherlands was inherited by Sophia Henriette's older sister Louisa Anna (by marriage Countess of Erbach-Fürstenau), and after Louise's death in 1714 without surviving issue, by Sophia Henriette's son Ernest Frederick I, who sold it to the Dutch province of Gelderland in 1748.