She was the wife of Prince Henry of Prussia, a younger brother of Wilhelm II, German Emperor and her first cousin.

Her daughters were taught how to do housework, such as baking cakes, making their own beds, laying fires and sweeping and dusting their rooms.

[3] The family was devastated in 1873 when Irene's haemophiliac younger brother Friedrich, nicknamed "Frittie", fell through an open window, struck his head on the balustrade and died hours later of a brain hemorrhage.

Knowing she was in danger of dying, Princess Alice dictated her will, including instructions about how to bring up her daughters and how to run the household.

Princess Irene and her surviving siblings spent annual holidays in England and their grandmother sent instructions to their governess regarding their education and approving the pattern of their dresses.

[7] With her sister Alix, Irene was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of their maternal aunt, Princess Beatrice, to Prince Henry of Battenberg.

[8] Irene married her first cousin Prince Henry of Prussia, the third child and second son of Frederick III, German Emperor and Victoria, Princess Royal, on 24 May 1888 at the chapel of the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin.

However, Empress Victoria was shocked because Irene did not wear a shawl or scarf to disguise her pregnancy when she was pregnant with her first son, the haemophiliac Prince Waldemar, in 1889.

Empress Victoria, who was fascinated by politics and current events, also couldn't understand why Heinrich and Irene never read a newspaper.

[citation needed] Irene transmitted the haemophilia gene to her eldest and youngest sons, Waldemar and Heinrich.

[13] Six months after little Heinrich's death, Irene became an aunt to Tsarevich Alexei of Russia, son of her youngest sister, Tsarina Alexandra, who also had hemophilia.

In 1907, Irene helped arrange what later turned out to be a disastrous marriage between Elisabeth’s ward, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, to Prince Vilhelm, Duke of Södermanland.

[17] In 1912, Irene was a source of support to her sister Alix when Alexei nearly died of complications of haemophilia at the Imperial Family's hunting lodge in Poland.