Kemény was born in Gerend in the Principality of Transylvania, a constituent land of the Habsburg monarchy (today part of Luna, Romania) in 1795.
In 1814, he was elected a judge of the Kolozs County Court, but soon moved to the Gubernium seated in Kolozsvár, where he was sworn in as a chancery official on 9 January 1815.
He fell in love with Anna Láng, the daughter of a Carinthian noble teacher, a 20-year-old girl of rare education, and married her in the autumn of 1821 without his father's knowledge or consent.
He lived for nearly two years in the Altorja (today Turia, Romania) mansion of Baron Lázár Apor until he was reconciled with his father.
[1] In 1830, he wrote five articles in the Scientific Collection about the Romanians of Transylvania, his own family, the deer on the coat of arms of Kemény family, the old Székely poet Szőke Ambrus Gelenczei, and the literature of "the lost children of the city of Hameln and the fable of the origin of the Transylvanian Saxons".
For twenty years he served free of charge in Kolozsvár, Vienna and Nagyszeben, but under the influence of his father, who opposed his marriage, he was not promoted to more than honorary governorate.
His work, apart from the initial "joke" forgery scandal, is both authentic and careful, which is why he has been elected a member of many scientific societies.