Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig in 1819. The daughter of a piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck, she started piano lessons at the age of five, and by age 16 had already established a reputation as a child prodigy all over Europe. She first got to know Robert Schumann when he moved into the family home to start his piano studies with Friedrich Wieck, and a relationship soon developed.

After a courtship which Clara's tyrannical father tried desperately to prevent (banning them from seeing each other, and resorting to a court of law), Clara married Robert in 1840 as soon as she reached the age of 21. Their 16 years of marriage produced 8 children, the youngest of whom (Eugenie) lived well into the 20th Century (1936).

When  Robert died in 1856 Clara was aged only 36, and and survived him by another 40 years. After Robert's death she decided to make a new start and moved with her young family to Berlin to live with her mother. In 1863 they moved to Baden-Baden by which time her foreign concert tours had become a predominant part of her life, and a means of supporting her family. She was soon acknowledged as the most celebrated woman pianist of the 19th Century, and an ardent proponent of her husband's music, which she performed frequently in concert tours all over Europe, including regular trips to London - where she played for the last time in 1888.

A gifted composer in her own right, her compositions include a piano concerto, chamber music, songs, and many character pieces for solo piano. She had also taught at the Leipzig Conservatory, and from 1878 was principal piano professor at the Frankfurt am Main Conservatory of Music. She edited the collected edition of her husband's works which were published from 1881-93.

A close friendship with Johannes Brahms (a family friend dating from the last years of Schumann's life) has been the subject of much speculation for 150 years. Clara Schumann died in 1896 aged 77 and was buried in Robert's grave in Bonn.