Princess Maria was born in Bucharest as the first Princess of Romania that was also of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, on . After a month, in , she was baptised as a Romanian Orthodox at the monastery of Cotroceni (near the site of the present-day Cotroceni Palace). In her family, the young princess was nicknamed ""Mariechen"" (a possible homage to her parents' German heritage) or ""Itty"" (derived from little). Everyone who knew Maria described her as a beautiful and precocious young child, as she was said to look at maps and identify different countries for fun at the age of only two and a half. It is said that sometime before she died, Princess Maria told her mother that she would someday like to be able to ride a star. Maria had no prospect of inheriting her father's throne; the 1866 Constitution limited succession to males. On , the Princess became ill with scarlet fever. An epidemic had been ravaging the capital at the time. She was immediately transported to the Peleș Castle. Despite being treated with much care by a doctor named Theodori and many others, the young princess expired on and was buried at the monastery of Cotroceni. At Elisabeth's request, Maria's tombstone read the Bible verse, :  The funeral service took place at the Cotroceni Church within the grounds of the Cotroceni Royal Palace. The coffin was covered with white satin, criss-crossed with silver lace ornaments and was as large as one for an adult, because the infant princess' body was enclosed in several decreasing size caskets placed one inside another. After the religious service in the Romanian Orthodox rite, the cortege walked through the palace gardens to the burial place next to the palace church. Those gardens were the favorite playing grounds for the young princess, where only half a dozen days previously she had played with her nurse. Her parents were devastated by her death. On 5 May that year, Carol wrote to Charles Anthony, Prince of Hohenzollern that they intended to move to the Cotroceni Palace, in order to be closer to the resting place of their infant daughter:  In another letter to Lascăr Catargiu, he wrote:  The death of their only child worsened the relationship between Carol and Elisabeth and they did not have any further children. In 1875, Karl Storck created a bust of the sleeping princess which was erected by her tomb.