In 1834, when Saliha was twenty three years old, her father arranged her marriage to
Damat Gürcü Halil Rifat Pasha. According to Sakaoğlu, she married at an older age than was the norm for princesses due to health problems. The marriage took place on a Saturday, 22 May 1834, in the Beşiktaş Waterfront Palace. The bridal procession of Saliha Sultan left this palace on Thursday, conveying the bride to Fındıklı Palace. The ladies of the marriage procession rode in carriages and coaches decorated with stars.
Julia Pardoe, who observed the marriage from a caique on the
Bosphorus noted the illumination of the waterfront palace of Esma Sultan. She writes that, "there must have been many hundred caiques wedged together in front of her terrace, and less than fifty of them contained musicians." The wedding ceremony was covered in the first official Ottoman newspaper
Takvim-i Vekayi. The couple owned the Neşatabad Palace located in Ortaköy Defterdarburnu and the Fındıklı Palace. The marriage wasn't a happy one. However, they had two sons and a daughter. According to
Pardoe, Saliha was a haughty person and had a turbulent relationship with her father Mahmud II. In her memoir of her journey of Istanbul,
The Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks (1837), she relates two episodes in particular. In the first, Saliha would be harshly reprimanded by Mahmud II for ordering to beat a group of
Ulema who had not bowed as her carriage passed by. In the second, Pardoe reports that, on the occasion of the wedding of Saliha's half-sister,
Mihrimah Sultan, there were no more imperial jewels to give her because Saliha had demanded all of them for her wedding and had never returned them. Besides, she never wore them, because she was too proud to lead a worldly life. Mahmud proposed to sell them, but she replied that no one would dare to buy the jewels of a princess. Mahmud then offered to buy them himself, and Saliha was forced to accept. In reality Mahmud cheated his daughter by paying less than their value. It is not known if Saliha ever learned about that, but in any case she is not known to have complained about it. ==Death==