She was born in a wealthy middle class family in Ljubljana, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now the capital of Slovenia).
Her father was an Austrian Jew who had converted to Roman Catholicism, her mother was Slovene.
She dedicated herself to the study of family patterns, becoming one of the leading European experts in the field.
She was among the co-founders of the Slovenian Social Democratic Party in 1989, together with Jože Pučnik, Matjaž Šinkovec and France Tomšič.
After the victory of the DEMOS coalition in the first free elections in Slovenia in April 1990, she became the Minister for Health in Lojze Peterle's cabinet.