She was the youngest of four children born to Prince Georg of Saxe-Meiningen and his wife, Countess Klara Marie von Korff genannt Schmising-Kerssenbrock (1895–1992).

The elder brother, Anton Ulrich, was killed in action during the Second World War, while the younger, Friedrich Alfred, became a Carthusian monk.

Her father, a judge in Meiningen and Hildburghausen, joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and died a captive at the Soviet camp for prisoners of war at Cherepovets in 1946.

In 1949, she met Otto von Habsburg, the heir of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and the last crown prince of the dissolved Austria-Hungary, when he came to visit his former subjects in the Caritas home.

[1] In April 1985 she represented her husband Otto at the reburial of the remains of Albert II, Duke of Austria in the Gaming Charterhouse.