Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin (Baroness) von Richthofen (also known under her married names as Frieda Weekley, Frieda Lawrence, and Frieda Lawrence Ravagli) was born at
Metz into the Heinersdorf line of the . Her father was Baron Friedrich Ernst Emil Ludwig von Richthofen (1844–1916), an engineer in the
Imperial German Army, and her mother was Anna Elise Lydia Marquier (1852–1930). Her elder sister was the economist and social scientist
Else von Richthofen. In 1899, she married a British
philologist and professor of modern languages,
Ernest Weekley, who was some fourteen years her senior, with whom she had three children, Charles Montague (born 1900), Elsa Agnès (born 1902) and Barbara Joy (born 1904). They settled in
Nottingham, where Ernest was an
academic at the university. During her marriage to Weekley she began to translate
German literature, mainly fairy tales, into English. In 1912 she met
D. H. Lawrence, a former student of her husband; she and Lawrence soon fell in love and eloped to Germany. During their stay Lawrence was arrested for spying; after the intervention of Frieda's father, the couple walked south over the
Alps to Italy. In 1914, following her divorce, Frieda and Lawrence married. She had to leave her children with Weekley, because, as the adulterous respondent to a divorce instigated by her husband, she was not legally able to gain custody unless he consented. They had intended to return to the continent, but the outbreak of war kept them in England, where they endured official harassment and
censorship. They also struggled with limited resources and Lawrence's already frail health. Leaving postwar England at the earliest opportunity, they traveled widely, eventually settling at the
Kiowa Ranch near
Taos, New Mexico, and in Lawrence's last years at the Villa Mirenda, near
Scandicci in
Tuscany. After her husband's death in
Vence, France, in 1930, she returned to Taos to live with her third husband,
Angelo Ravagli. The ranch is now owned by the
University of New Mexico at
Albuquerque.
Georgia O'Keeffe, who knew her in Taos, said in 1974: "Frieda was very special. I can remember very clearly the first time I ever saw her, standing in a doorway, with her hair all frizzed out, wearing a cheap red calico dress that looked as though she'd just wiped out the frying pan with it. She was not thin, and not young, but there was something radiant and wonderful about her."
Joseph Glasco became close friends with Frieda when he and
William Goyen lived together in Taos in the 1950s. At one point, Frieda asked Glasco to arrange an exhibition of
D. H. Lawrence's paintings. They remained friends until her death in 1956. Mainly through her
elder sister, Frieda became acquainted with many
intellectuals and authors, including the
socioeconomist Alfred Weber and
sociologist Max Weber, the radical
psychoanalyst Otto Gross (who became her lover), and the writer
Fanny zu Reventlow.
''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' D.H. Lawrence's ''
Lady Chatterley's Lover'' is thought to be based partly on Frieda Lawrence's relationship as an
aristocrat with the
working-class Lawrence. John Harte's dramatisation led to its being Lawrence's only novel to be staged. She loved the play when she read it and supported its staging, but the copyright to Lawrence's story had already been acquired by
Baron Philippe de Rothschild, a close friend. He did not relinquish it until 1960, after
the film version had been released. John Harte's play was first produced at the
Arts Theatre in London in 1961, five years after her death. ==Death==