[1] She went to a Waldorf school in Berlin and graduated from Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts.

[3] Herfurth had her first role in a TV series at age ten, and her first part in a movie in 2000, when she was fifteen.

She has held several parts as a teenager in German movies such as Mädchen, Mädchen (2001) and Big Girls Don't Cry (2002) and leading parts both in TV productions and independent German films.

In this adaptation of Patrick Süskind's best-selling novel Das Parfum, she played the "Plum Girl", the first victim of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

In 2008, she co-starred with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes in the Academy Award Best Picture-nominee The Reader.