Liliʻuokalani sibling Kaiminaauao
Her family were of the aliʻi class of the Hawaiian nobility and were collateral relations of the reigning House of Kamehameha, sharing common descent from the 18th-century aliʻi nui (supreme monarch) Keaweʻīkekahialiʻiokamoku. From her biological parents, she descended from Keaweaheulu and Kameʻeiamoku, two of the five royal counselors of Kamehameha I during his conquest of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Kameʻeiamoku, the grandfather of both her mother and father, was depicted, along with his royal twin Kamanawa, on the Hawaiian coat of arms. Liliʻuokalani referred to her family line as the "Keawe-a-Heulu line" after her mother's line. The third surviving child of a large family, her biological siblings included: James Kaliokalani, David Kalākaua, Anna Kaʻiulani, Kaʻiminaʻauao, Miriam Likelike and William Pitt Leleiohoku II. She and her siblings were hānai (informally adopted) to other family members. The Hawaiian custom of hānai is an informal form of adoption between extended families practiced by Hawaiian royals and commoners alike. She was given at birth to Abner Pākī and his wife Laura Kōnia and raised with their daughter Bernice Pauahi.In 1842, at the age of four, she began her education at the Chiefs' Children's School (later known as the Royal School). She, along with her classmates, had been formally proclaimed by Kamehameha III as eligible for the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Liliʻuokalani later noted that these "pupils were exclusively persons whose claims to the throne were acknowledged." She, along with her two older brothers James Kaliokalani and David Kalākaua, as well as her thirteen royal cousins, were taught in English by American missionaries Amos Starr Cooke and his wife, Juliette Montague Cooke. The children were taught reading, spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, geography, history, bookkeeping, music and English composition by the missionary couple who had to maintain the moral and sexual development of their charges. Liliʻuokalani was placed with the youngest pupils of the class along with Princess Victoria Kamāmalu, Mary Polly Paʻaʻāina, and John William Pitt Kīnaʻu. In later life, Liliʻuokalani would look back unfavorably on her early education remembering being "sent hungry to bed" and the 1848 measles epidemic that claimed the life of a classmate Moses Kekūāiwa and her younger sister Kaʻiminaʻauao. The boarding school run by the Cookes was discontinued around 1850, so she, along with her former classmate Victoria, was sent to the relocated day school (also called Royal School) run by Reverend Edward G. Beckwith. On May 5, 1853, she finished third in her final class exams behind Victoria and Nancy Sumner. In 1865, after her marriage, she informally attended Oʻahu College (modern day Punahou School) and received instruction under Susan Tolman Mills, who later cofounded Mills College in California.
brother or sister kin