Her father, a military musician tried to provide her, and all his children, with an education, but her mother did not see the need for a girl to become educated. She preferred Lina, as she was known, to work as a maid for the family. Because her childhood diseases hurt the way she looked, her parents concluded she would never marry.
In 1757, Caroline’s 19-year-old brother William escaped from the Seven year War to England where he began to teach music. Later, their brother Alexander joined him and they frequently performed as musicians. In 1772, William asked Caroline, now 22, to come to England to work as his housekeeper.
Besides being a musician and conductor, William was a gtreat astronomer. Caroline also helped him keep his records. On March 13, 1781, William spotted what he first believed to be a comet. After careful observation by himself and other astronomers, it was determined he had discovered a new planet, Uranus.
Whenever William was travelled, Caroline spent time making her own observations. In 1783 she discovered three new nebulae (nebulae are hazy clouds where stars form). Today, these objects are know as NGC 2360, NGC 205, and NGC 253. On August 1, 1786, Caroline discovered her first comet. This was the first discovery of a comet by a woman. In 1787 King George III gave Caroline a salary of 50 pounds per year to keep working as William's assistant. Because of this, she became the first woman officially recognized for a scientific position.
By 1797 she had discovered seven more comets. Besides her comet hunting, Caroline also began rewriting the star catalog created by John Flamsteed adding another 560 stars which Flamsteed had left out. After William died in 1822, Caroline returned to Hannover and completed William's catalogue of 2500 nebulae.
Soon, she received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society on February 8, 1828. later She became the first woman to receive honorary membership into Britain's Royal Society in 1835. She was elected into the Royal Irish Academy in 1838, and awarded the Gold Medal for Science by the King of Prussia in 1846 on her 96th birthday.
She died on January 9, 1848. Before she died, she wrote her own epitaph (the writing on her tombstone). It reads, "The eyes of her who is glorified here below turned to the starry heavens." In 1889, Caroline received a final honor for her achievements when a minor planet was named "Lucretia," her middle name.