Along with her six siblings, father, and stepmother, Maria Augusta von Trapp, she was part of the Trapp Family Singers, who inspired the 1959 Broadway musical and the 1965 Academy Award-winning Best Picture The Sound of Music.

The family fled Austria after the German annexation of Austria, fearing reprisals resulting from declining to sing at Hitler's birthday party and Georg von Trapp's refusal to accept a commission in Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine.

Maria Franziska became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1948 and lived at her family's lodge in Stowe, Vermont.

During their visit, the group met with Ernst Florian Winter, the husband of her sister Johanna (1919–1994).

[9] Maria Franziska von Trapp died on Tuesday, 18 February 2014, in Stowe, Vermont, at the age of 99.