La Roche spent the majority of her childhood in Augsburg, under strict Pietist upbringing, and made frequent visits to Biberach.

In 1753, however, she married Georg Michael Anton Frank Maria von La Roche—completely surprising to her fiancé Wieland, who at the time lived in Switzerland.

La Roche held a literary salon in their home in the borough of Koblenz, one that Goethe mentions in Dichtung und Wahrheit.

In 1780, La Roche's husband was fired from his office by Electoral Archbishop Clemens Wenzeslaus, due to his outspoken critical opinions of the church.

Due to the French Revolutionary occupation of the left bank of the Rhine in 1794, La Roche's widow's pension was cut off, so that she felt forced to secure her income through writing.

After her husband's death, she spent her time in Speyer and Offenbach am Main, and traveled to Switzerland, France, Holland and England, which experiences prompted her to write and publish travelogues.

In the thirteenth book of his Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe writes of Sophie von La Roche: "She was a wonderful woman, and I don't know another to compare her to.

Her first novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim can be considered a founding text for the German female literary tradition.