Sophie Magdalene of Brandenburg-Kulmbach was the daughter of Margrave Christian Heinrich of Brandenburg-Kulmbach and Sophie Christiane of Wolfstein. She grew up with in a large and deeply religious family on the Schönberg castle by Nuremberg. The family belonged to a princely house of limited financial means, and her father had to sell his right of inheritance to Bayreuth to the King of Prussia.

Sophie Magdalene was a lady-in-waiting to the Saxon-Polish Queen in Pretzsch, south of Berlin, when, at the age of 21, she met the Danish Crown Prince Christian (VI). Their courtship was brief. They met on 16 July 1721. The next day, there was a ball at the palace, and just two days later, on 19 July, Christian wrote to his father, Frederik IV that he had found the woman he wanted to share his life with. As soon as he received a positive reply from home, the two were married. The wedding was held on 7 August, in Pretzsch.

The couple had a very harmonious marriage. They both adhered to pietism, and their deep personal religiosity strengthened their bond. However, it also limited the amount of entertaining they did, which made life at the royal court rather formal and quiet during their time.

The couple had two children, Frederik (V) and Louise, the later Duchess of Saxe-Hildburghausen

Sophie Magdalene’s relationship with her father-in-law’s wife, Anne Sophie Reventlow, was not exactly warm. Some have argued that the reason why Sophie Magdalene wanted a new crown for her anointing in 1731 was that she did not want to wear the same crown that Anna Sophie Reventlow had worn. It is certainly true that there was no love lost between the two women. Frederik IV had entered into a morganatic marriage with Anna Sophie while he was still married to Queen Louise. This was bigamy, which was strictly forbidden, but as absolute king, Frederik IV stood above the law. The actual reason, however, was probably a desire to have a more contemporary crown for The Queen to match The King’s crown, as the old crown seemed outdated. 

In any case, Sophie Magdalene had a new crown made, which remained in use until as late as 1840, when the last royal anointing ceremony took place in Denmark. Sophie Magdalene also founded the Danish collection of crown jewels when she left some of her own jewellery to the Crown in her will. She did this to ensure that the sitting queen would always have appropriate jeweller to wear. 

Today, both the Danish crown jewels and the queen’s crown are on public display in the Treasury under Rosenborg Castle.

Sophie Magdalene and Christian VI both took a keen interest in erecting new, grand and precious buildings, even through their pious lifestyle meant that the magnificent halls were rarely used for festivities. Among other projects, Sophie Magdalene had Hirschholm Palace built, which became her dower house when she was widowed in 1746, after 24 years of marriage. Here she was one of the pioneers in abolishing serfdom and carried out reforms to benefit the farmers on her estate. They became freeholders with autonomy over their own farms, provided they paid the annual dues. As Queen Dowager at Hirschholm, she was a warm, loving grandmother to her grandchildren. By all accounts, she had a particularly close bond with Christian VII. Sophie Magdalene died at Christiansborg Palace on 27 May 1770, aged 69. She is entombed next to her husband, Christian VI, in Frederik V’s Chapel in Roskilde Cathedral.