Her father Robert Herr was a locomotive driver and was imprisoned for a long time because of his membership in the Communist Party; later he was sent to a concentration camp.

There she worked as a typist in the Dillenburg city administration, where she was known by her nicknames of "Tutti" and jokingly also as "dat Pummel" because of her full figure.

In 1949, she and her friend and mentor Gustav Schellhardt founded the "Cologne Lustspielbühne", whose existence, however, was not long lasting.

After its bankruptcy, Trude Herr worked between 1949 and 1954 as a barmaid in the gay bar Barberina (Hohes Tor).

Trude Herr was discovered by Willi Schaeffers, the head of the cabaret Tingel-Tangel, who engaged her in Berlin in 1958.

The schedule lasted only from September to the end of December, the rest of the time the theater was rented out or was dark.

The melancholic song Niemals geht man so ganz ("You never leave completely"), which she interpreted with Wolfgang Niedecken (BAP) and Tommy Engel (Bläck Fööss) was her last great success; it reached in No.

In February 1991, she moved to Lauris, a small village in Vaucluse, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in southern France, where she died of heart failure on 16 March 1991.