[3] Largely forgotten in contemporary discussions of the American women's rights movement, she was one of its major intellectual forces in nineteenth-century America.

Although less well remembered than her fellow suffragists and abolitionists, in 1996, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and in 1998 the Ernestine Rose Society was founded to “revive the legacy of this important early nineteenth century reformer by recognizing her pioneering role in the first wave of feminism.”[7] She was born on 13 January 1810 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Duchy of Warsaw, as Ernestine Louise Potowska.

At the age of five, Rose began to "question the justice of a God who would exact such hardships" as the frequent fasts that her father performed.

Rose, not wanting to enter a marriage with a man she neither chose nor loved, confronted him, professing her lack of affection towards him and begging for release.

In a highly unusual move, Rose traveled to the secular civil court — a difficult trip in winter — where she pleaded her case herself.

Rose then traveled to Berlin, where she found herself hampered by an antisemitic law that required all non-Prussian Jews to have a Prussian sponsor.

While in England, she met Robert Owen, a Utopian socialist,[2] who was so impressed by her that he invited her to speak in a large hall for radical speakers.

"[8] During her time there she also met William Ella Rose, a Christian jeweler and silversmith, an Englishman, and a "fervent disciple" of Owen.

Rose soon began to give lectures on the subjects that most interested her, joining the "Society for Moral Philanthropists" and traveling to different states to espouse her causes: the abolition of slavery, religious tolerance, public education, and equality for women.

"[2] When, in 1855, she was invited to deliver an anti-slavery lecture in Bangor, Maine, a local newspaper called her "a female Atheist... a thousand times below a prostitute."

Although she never seemed to attach great importance to her Jewish background, in 1863 Rose had a published debate with Horace Seaver, the abolitionist editor of the Boston Investigator, whom she accused of being antisemitic.

Susan B. Anthony arranged a farewell party for them, and the couple received many gifts from friends and admirers, including a substantial amount of money.