[1] Born in Amsterdam, Prien is of Jewish origin and first grew up in the Netherlands, where her maternal grandparents had fled in the early 1930s before the emergence of National Socialism in Germany.

From 1986 to 1989, she was a student assistant of Friedbert Pflüger, then the press secretary of the Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker.

[8] In the negotiations to form a fourth coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, Prien was part of the working group on education policy, led by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Stefan Müller and Hubertus Heil.

Since 17 November 2018, Prien has been one of the four deputy chairs of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein, succeeding State Minister for Justice Sabine Sütterlin-Waack who did not run for reelection.

"[15] Ahead of the 2021 elections, CDU chairman Armin Laschet included Prien in his eight-member shadow cabinet for the Christian Democrats' campaign.

[17] For the 2021 national elections, Prien endorsed Armin Laschet as the Christian Democrats' joint candidate to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel.