She was born to Jewish parents Rosine (Шаблон:Nee) and Moshe (Moritz) Goldmann in Agram, Croatia. She learned to read and write from her mother, and was later sent to a private secondary school for girls.Шаблон:R
In 1867, she moved to Vienna and married banker and railway entrepreneur Samuel (later Georg) Hirschler, with whom she bore three children, Klara (1868), Dorothea (1869), and Otto Israel (1872).Шаблон:R There she founded the Society of Women Writers and Artists (Шаблон:Lang-de), of which she was the treasurer.Шаблон:R Soon after her sister Luise's marriage to German Hispanist Johannes Fastenrath in 1881, she and her family left the Jewish community, converted to Roman Catholicism, and changed their surname to Forstenheim.Шаблон:R
Forstenheim's first-known published work was Caterina Cornaro (1875), a historical drama in five acts on the life of the last monarch of Cyprus. She was also a regular contributor to various magazines, such as Bazar, the Gartenlaube, the Neuen Freien Presse, the Шаблон:Ill, the Berner Bund, and the Straßburger Zeitung.
