Growing up in the harsh climate of northern Norway, she was 34 when she married Hans Egede, the 21-year-old pastor of Vågan Church in the Lofoten archipelago.

In 1718, the couple and their children moved to Bergen, whence – at the conclusion of the Great Northern War – they set sail for Greenland on 12 May 1721, arriving at Baal's River (the modern Nuup Kangerlua) on the southwest coast on 3 July.

Hope Colony (Haabets Koloni) was established on Kangeq Island at the mouth of the fjord; the remains of the house where the family lived together with (initially) about 25 other people are still preserved.

The settlement was moved to the mainland and renamed Godthaab by the royal governor Claus Paarss in 1728.

In 1736, her husband left the island in the care of his son Poul and returned her body to Denmark for burial at the St. Nikolai Church in Copenhagen (now Kunsthallen Nikolaj) where Egede himself was buried upon his death in 1758.