In 1829, after several failed marriage attempts, she was married to her father's first cousin, Hereditary Prince Ferdinand, who was heir presumptive to the throne from 1848 to 1863.

Princess Caroline was born on 28 October 1793 at Christiansborg Palace, the then principal residence of the Danish Monarchy in central Copenhagen.

)[4] However, despite these well-intentioned wishes, she and her fourteen years younger sister, Princess Vilhelmine, would be the only of the parent's eight children to reach adulthood.

Subsequently, Princess Caroline moved with her parents to the Amalienborg Palace complex in the district of Frederiksstaden in central Copenhagen.

[6] Her father had no surviving sons and Caroline and her sister Vilhelmine Marie (1808-1891), were excluded from succession to the throne as a result of Salic Law.

Despite this fact, however, she was still commonly called and referred to as Crown Princess prior to her marriage, as the eldest child of her father, though she did not have the formal title.

Already in 1810, two years after her father's accession to the throne, Napoleon suggested a marriage between the 17-year-old princess and the newly elected heir to the Swedish throne, the 41-year-old Prince Christian August of Augustenborg; her father disapproved but began marriage negotiations, which were interrupted by the unexpected death of Christian August shortly afterward.

As such, Prince Ferdinand was third in line to the throne, and the marriage was arranged for dynastic reasons with the aim of uniting the two branches of the Danish royal family.

It had been bought for them by King Frederick VI in 1829, and was renovated for them in the Empire style of the period by the Neoclassical Danish architect Jørgen Hansen Koch.

[11] The arranged marriage was childless but otherwise turned out to be successful in many ways, and Caroline eventually came to live quite harmoniously with her spouse.

The damage upon her looks was permanent, and she was later to remark, when she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, that she was sincerely grateful that she managed to acquire any friends who could stand to look at her face.