Le Fort was born in Minden, in the former Province of Westphalia, then the Kingdom of Prussia within the German Empire.

[2] In 1931, Le Fort published the novella, The Song at the Scaffold (German: Die Letzte am Schafott), based on the 1794 execution of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne.

She was nominated by Hermann Hesse for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was granted an honorary Doctorate of Theology for her contributions to the issue of faith in her works.

Among her many other works, Le Fort also published a book titled Die ewige Frau (The Eternal Woman) in 1934, which appeared in paperback in English in 2010.

[6] In 1939, Le Fort had made her home in the town of Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps, and it was there that she died on 1 November 1971, aged 95.