During his formative years, Luis Federico Riefkohl received his primary and secondary education in various places. These included the towns of Arroyo, Puerto Rico; Christainsted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands and he spent three and a half years at Phillips Andover Academy in Boston, Massachusetts. Riefkohl received an appointment on July 5, 1907, from Beekman Winthrop, the U.S. appointed Governor of Puerto Rico from 1904 to 1907, to attend the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1911, he became the first Puerto Rican to graduate from the Academy.