Marie Sophie Schwartz was born in Borås and was the illegitimate daughter of the maidservant Carolina Birath and, probably, of her employer, the married merchant Johan Daniel Broms.

In her official biography, she stated that her mother was Albertina Björk and that her father died before she was born leaving them in poverty, thereby explaining her adoption.

She has a place as a female pioneer, as she was the second woman after Wendela Hebbe to be given a permanent position at a Swedish newspaper: she was employed in the serials department of the paper Svenska Tidningen Dagligt Allehanda from 1851 to 1859.

She was popular and successful, and her work were translated to Danish, German, French, English, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian and Polish.

Among her work was Mannen av börd och qvinnan af folket (A Man of Birth and a Woman of the People) from 1858, in which she criticized the snobbery and privilege of the nobility, and reprinted in German around 1923, edited by Clara Hepner; Emancipationsvurmen (Enthusiasm of Emancipation) from 1860, in which she supported the independence and liberation of women; and what has been pointed out as her masterpiece: Positivspelarens son (The Son of the Barrel organ player) from 1863, in which she describes how someone born to a bad reputation only because of his birth can redeem himself by his personal acts.