Her first years were spent in the huge Bet il Mtoni palace, by the sea about eight kilometres north of Stone Town.

While living in Stone Town she became acquainted with her neighbour, a German merchant, Rudolph Heinrich Ruete (born 10 March 1839; died 6 August 1870) and became pregnant by him.

In August 1866, after her pregnancy had become obvious, she fled on board the British frigate HMS Highflyer commanded by Captain [Thomas] Malcolm Sabine Pasley R.N.

[5] She had given birth to a son, Heinrich, in Aden in December 1866; he died in France en route to Germany in the summer of 1867.

They were: Her husband died in 1870 after a tram accident, leaving Ruete in difficult economic circumstances because the authorities denied her inheritance claims.

Partly to alleviate these economic problems she wrote Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, first published as Memoiren einer arabischen Prinzessin in the German Empire in 1886, and shortly afterwards published in the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

After the death of her husband, Emily Ruete was caught up in the colonial plans of Otto von Bismarck.

In 1914 she returned to Europe to live with her daughter Rosa in Bromberg, where Martin Troemer was stationed as a military commander.

In 1992, An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds was published, making her letters home, with her reactions on life in Europe, available to the public.