Henrietta Frankfurter was the daughter of Rabbi Feibisch Frankfurterof Friedberg. In 1843 she married Samuel Adler,a student of her father who had recently been elected the districtrabbi of the congregations in Alzey in Rhenish Hesse. In 1857Henrietta, Samuel and their two sons, Isaak and Felix, set sail forNew York, where Samuel had accepted a post as the rabbi of Reformcongregation Temple Emanu-El.

Samuel enjoyed asuccessful career as one of the leaders of American Reform Judaism.Felix would become a prominent professor of ethics, a social reformerand founder of the Ethical Culture movement. He later remarked on hismother’s “strong sense of practical righteousness” as apowerful influence on his moral development, recalling how shebrought him along on trips to deliver food to the city’s poortenement dwellers and how she opened her doors inviting the lessfortunate to dine with the Adler family.