She was the daughter of a physician, Benjamin de Lemos (1711–1789), descended from a
Portuguese Jewish family of
Hamburg, and his second wife Esther de Lemos (née Charleville) (1742–1817). First wife of her father was Chana Charleville (1707–1762). Henriette Herz had grown up in the
Berlin of the
Jewish emancipation and had shared tutors apparently with
Moses Mendelssohn's daughters. At age fifteen, she married a physician
Markus Herz (1747–1803), seventeen years her senior. The marriage remained childless. Markus Herz had studied medicine at the
University of Königsberg, one of only three universities that accepted Jews—but only in its medical faculty. She was said to be an extremely beautiful woman. After a few years the salon split in two, a science-seminar led by her husband and a literary salon by Henriette herself. Most notable men and women in Berlin were said to have attended her salon. Among her friends and acquaintances were
Dorothea von Schlegel,
Wilhelm von Humboldt and his brother
Alexander von Humboldt,
Jean Paul,
Friedrich Schiller,
Mirabeau,
Friedrich Rückert,
Karl Wilhelm Ramler,
Johann Jakob Engel,
Georg Ludwig Spalding, the Danish
Barthold Georg Niebuhr,
Johannes von Müller, the sculptor
Schadow,
Salomon Maimon,
Friedrich von Gentz,
Fanny von Arnstein,
Madame de Genlis,
Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten, Gustav von Brinkmann, and
Friedrich Schlegel.
Alexander von Humboldt often visited and even received Hebrew lessons from Henriette. The theologian
Friedrich Schleiermacher was another frequent visitor. After the death of her husband she came under the powerful influence of Schleiermacher and converted to
Protestantism. Her grave is preserved in the
Protestant Friedhof II der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. II of the congregations of
Jerusalem's Church and
New Church) in
Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of
Hallesches Tor. ==References==