[2][3] Pertz spent most of her youth in Berlin, where her father was Royal Librarian, though they visited England each year.
[2] The next year she took part one of the Natural Sciences Tripos, with her subjects including botany, and gained second-class honours.
[3] Pertz subsequently undertook research into plant physiology, working under Francis Darwin, a reader at the university.
[2] After Darwin's retirement, Pertz was encouraged by Frederick Blackman to undertake research on meristematic tissue, but after a year observing germinating seeds her results were inconclusive.
[3] She abandoned research, possibly over disappointment, though Agnes Arber claimed "she came to recognize that the plant physiology of the twentieth century was developing on lines widely divergent from those on which she had been educated and that it demanded a grasp of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, which she did not possess.