At his mother's wish Frederick was educated by private tutors together with the sons of his cousin, George II, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, in Marburg.

At the age of 16 he made the Grand Tour through Italy and France, and was then signed up as a student at the University of Geneva, although he did not follow a real course of academic study: he learned dancing, riding and fencing, and polished his knowledge of the French language.

Since his elder brothers preceded him in the succession, he decided on a military career and in 1654 became a colonel in the army of the King of Sweden, Charles X Gustav.

In 1670 Frederick married the Elector's niece Princess Luise Elisabeth von Kurland, after moving from the Lutheran to the Reformed church and entering the service of Brandenburg as a general.

After the death of Georg Christian, his second eldest brother, who had mortgaged to Hesse-Darmstadt the landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg and the town of Homburg, Frederick redeemed them, and took up residence there himself.

He had the Baroque Schloss Bad Homburg constructed, and involved himself, with little success, in the local economy with the establishment of a glassworks and a salination plant.

At the age of 59 Frederick married for a third time: the widow Sophie Sybille von Leiningen-Westerburg, a connection of his mother's family, who bore him three more children.