[1][2] Goddard attended the Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy, a Catholic girls' school in Wheeling, West Virginia, from 1857 to 1859.

Despite a winter storm, the wedding was a leading social event in Washington, with guests including US President Ulysses S. Grant.

She assumed the title Baroness when her husband was made a Baron in 1873, and the title maharani in 1877 when her husband was made Maharajah of Sabah, Rajah of Gaya and Sandakan by Abdul Momin, the Sultan of Brunei.

[1][2] Relying financially on the income from a family trust invested in coal mines, she later lived apart from her husband in Baden-Baden and Berlin.

Her children and other descendants of her grandfather Samuel Finley Vinton engaged in a decades long legal battle (Von Overbeck v. Dahlgren) over his substantial estate, which lasted from his death in 1862 until 1928.