Elisabeth Wilhelmine Luise was born on 21 April 1767, in Treptow an der Rega, Province of Pomerania (present-day Trzebiatów, Poland) as the third daughter and eighth child of Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg and his wife, born Princess Friederike of Brandenburg-Schwedt.

[citation needed] There, she was educated in a convent of the Salesian sisters converted to Roman Catholicism in anticipation for her marriage to Joseph's nephew Francis, the son of his heir presumptive Leopold.

On the night of 18 February, after a twenty-four-hour delivery, she prematurely gave birth to Archduchess Ludovika Elisabeth, who lived for sixteen months.

Despite an emergency operation to save her life, Elisabeth did not survive and was buried in the Imperial Crypt.

[1][2] Elisabeth's letters to her brother, Charles Frederick Henry of Württemberg, are also preserved in the State Archive of Stuttgart.