Rahel Antonie Friederike Levin was born to a Jewish family in Berlin. Her father, a wealthy jeweler, was a strong-willed man who ruled his family despotically. She became close friends with Dorothea and Henriette, the daughters of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Through them she got to know Henriette Herz, with whom she would become most intimately associated throughout her life, moving in the same intellectual spheres. Together with Henriette Herz and her cousin, Sara Grotthuis née Meyer, she hosted one of the most famous Berlin salons of the 1800s. Her home became the meeting place for artists, poets and intellectuals such as Schlegel, Schelling, Steffens, Schack, Schleiermacher, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Motte Fouqué, Baron Brückmann, Ludwig Tieck, Jean Paul, and Friedrich Gentz. During a visit to Carlsbad in 1795 she was introduced to Goethe, whom she met again in Frankfurt am Main in 1815.