Her salon was an important part of Stockholm literary life and was regarded as a vital destination for a writer visiting Stockholm: Johan Ludvig Runeberg did so during his short visit in 1851. Her home continued to be a meeting place for decades, even after an illness left her unable to walk in 1878, and she was later to be acquainted with Ellen Key and Herman Sätherberg, whose poems she composed music to. She also accompanied her daughter, the famous opera singer Signe Hebbe, on her European tours. Wendela Hebbe was never to be famed as writer, but she played a great part as a salon hostess, and though she was herself never involved in the work for women's emancipation, she was an early role model for the emancipated woman through her independent and controversial lifestyle. Gösta Lundström said of her:  The writer and journalist Jane Gernandt- Claine described her:   Wendela Hebbe was much courted by contemporary male artists but is described as without vanity. She commented about herself and her life that she was born "with much longing and much frustration". In 1983 the association Friends of Wendela Hebbe ( was founded to preserve the memory of Wendela Hebbe. The association preserves her summer house in Södertälje, which was given to her by Hierta in 1863, and made it a museum. The gymnasium "Wendela Hebbegymnasiet" in Södertälje is named after her.