She was the seventh daughter and eleventh child of Leopold Joseph of Lorraine and his wife, Élisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans.

During the coronation of Louis XV in October 1722, Elisabeth Therese, her mother, and her sisters Anne Charlotte and Marie Louise went to the French royal court.

Elisabeth Therese's grandmother, Princess Palatine, found her three granddaughters very charming as well as attractive, though Anne Charlotte was deemed the most beautiful.

[2] Her father died in 1729 amid negotiations regarding a marriage between the then seventeen-year-old Elisabeth Therese and her recently widowed cousin Louis, Duke of Orléans.

In 1736, her brother, the Duke of Lorraine, married Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, daughter and heiress apparent of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor.

[6] Elisabeth Therese died at the Palace of Venaria aged 29, having fallen ill with puerperal fever after childbirth.