[2] Richter was born as the second child of seven[1] in Seifen (now Ryžovna [de]), a small town in the Bohemian Ore Mountains region[6] to a poor farming family[7] on 16 April 1892.

[9][11] In 1922, Richter underwent an orchiectomy,[6] a surgical removal of the testicles, performed by Berlin surgeon Erwin Gohrbandt at the Charité Universitätsmedizin.

[8] In early 1931, Richter had a penectomy performed by Institute physician Ludwig Levy-Lenz, and in June that year an artificial vagina was surgically grafted by Gohrbandt,[8][12] making her the first recorded transgender woman to undergo vaginoplasty.

[3][13] In 1931, Felix Abraham [de], a psychiatrist working at the institute, published a paper about Richter's (and Toni Ebel's) gender confirming surgeries as a case study in the Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik: "Her castration had the effect – albeit not very extensive – of making her body become fuller, restricting her beard growth, making visible the first signs of breast development, and giving the pelvic fat pad... a more feminine shape.

[6] In 1933, footage of Richter and two other of Hirschfeld's trans patients, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque (all anonymously/uncredited) was used as a documentary segment in the Austrian film Mysterium des Geschlechtes (Mystery of Sex),[6] directed by Lothar Golte and Carl Kurzmayer about contemporary sexology.

[16] In May 1933, with growing Nazi influence in Germany (Hirschfeld had fled the country), a mob of students attacked the institute, and the state authorities then burned its records.