Born in Paris to the landless Prince Palatine Edward,
Bénédicte Henriette's paternal grandparents were
Frederick V, Elector Palatine and
Elizabeth Stuart, the
Winter Queen. Her maternal grandparents were
Charles I, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat and his French wife
Catherine de Mayenne, daughter of
Charles de Lorraine-Guise, Duke of Mayenne. She was the youngest of three daughters. Bénédicte was reared by
Louise de La Fayette, a courtier-turned-nun known as Sister Louise-Angélique.
Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg She was married at the age of sixteen to a distant cousin,
John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who was the same age as her father, and childless. They were married on 30 November 1668. The union, which had been
arranged by the French diplomatist
Gourville, produced four daughters, only two of whom lived to mature adulthood. John Frederick died in 1679 without a male heir, and the duchy of Brunswick was inherited by his Protestant younger brother,
Ernest Augustus, the husband of Benedicta Henrietta's paternal aunt,
Sophia of Hanover, and father of
George I of Great Britain. After her husband's death, Benedicta returned to her native France and resided there with her sister, the princess of Condé. She corresponded with
Gottfried Leibniz. Benedicta died the age of 78, at Asnieres, her late sister's residence near Paris, on 12 August 1730. ==Issue==