She was born at the castle of the Dubský of Třebomyslice family in Zdislawitz near Kroměříž in Moravia (present Zdislavice in the Czech Republic), the daughter of Baron (from 1843: Count) Franz Joseph Dubský of Třebomyslice, a nobleman whose family roots are deeply Catholic and Bohemian, and his wife Maria Rosalia Therese, née Baroness von Vockel, who came from a noble Protestant-Saxon background.

Marie lost her mother in early infancy, but received a careful intellectual training from two stepmothers, first Baroness Eugenie von Bartenstein, and then her second step-mother, Countess Xaverine von Kolowrat-Krakowsky, who often contributed to her inspiration by taking her to the Burgtheater in Vienna periodically.

[1] However, because of her curiosity, access to information, and educated family, she became auto-didact at a young age, and was taught fluent French, German, and Czech.

In 1848 she married her cousin, Moritz von Ebner-Eschenbach, a physics and chemistry professor at a Viennese engineering academy.

[2] Then came a tragedy in five acts, Marie Roland, with several one-act dramas: Doktor Ritter, Violets (German: Das Veilchen), and The Disconsolate One.

Von Ebner-Eschenbach's elegance of style, her incisive wit and masterly depiction of character give her a foremost place among the German women writers of her time.

[2] Throughout her life, she had never created literature or plays for monetary reasons, and so, in her will, she left, as to aid other writers in their own endeavors, the compensation she had received.