Kalniņa was born in the village of Vanči in Courland Governorate, Russian Empire (today in Latvia) on 24 February 1874.

In the meantime, she had gone to St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, in an attempt to further her education, but was forced to return home in 1896 by financial difficulties.

During the German occupation of Latvia during World War II, she and her husband participated in the pro-independence Latvian Central Council.

[1] While still a student, Kalniņa was one of the founders of a literary group, Aurora (Latvian: Austra), that rejected the bourgeois idea that women's roles in life were limited to Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

Kalniņa and her husband left Russia that same year and lived in Germany and Switzerland until the outbreak of the 1905 Russian Revolution prompted their temporary return.