Charlotte Louise Kugler was born into a leading commercial family in Stettin, at that time entering the sixth year of just over seven under French occupation. Her father, Johann Georg Emmanuel Kugler (1777-1843), was a prominent city businessman, councillor and consul. (He was also a part-time poet.) Both her father and her mother, a preacher's daughter born Sophie Dorothea Eleonora Sternberg (1781-1854), had a deep interest in the arts: writers, musicians and artists were frequent and welcome guests in the family home. She had at least two elder brothers, the younger of whom, Franz Theodor Kugler (1808-1858), would later achieve a level of eminence as an art historian and cultural administrator for the Prussian state. Both siblings received art lessons in Stettin which took them beyond the level of mere dabbling.