Alexandrine was the daughter of Philip Frederik Tinne and Baroness Henriette van Capellen. She was born at the Hague on the 17th October 1839. Her father died when she was five years old, leaving her the richest heiress in the Netherlands.
After travelling in Norway, Italy and the East, and visiting Egypt, when she ascended the Nile to near Gondokoro, Miss Tinne left Europe again in 1861 for the Nile regions. Accompanied by her mother and her aunt, she set out from Cairo on the 9th of January 1862. After a short stay at Khartum the party ascended the White Nile to a point above Gondokoro, and explored a part of the Sobat, returning to Khartum in November. Baron Theodor von Heuglin and Dr H. Steudner having meantime joined the ladies at Khartum, the whole party set out in February 1863 for the Bahr-el-Ghazal. The intention was to explore that region and ascertain how far westward the Nile basin extended; also to investigate the reports of a vast lake in Central Africa eastwards of those already known-reports referring in all probability to the lake-like expanses of the middle Congo. Ascending the Bahr-el-Ghazal the limit of navigation was reached on the 10th of March. From Meshra-er-Rek a journey was made overland, across the Bahr Jur and south-west by the Bahr Kosango, to Jebel Kosango, on the borders of the Niam-Niam country. During the journey all the travellers suffered severely from fever. Steudner died in April and Madame Tinne in June, and after many fatigues and dangers the remainder of the party reached Khartum in July 1864, where Miss Tinne's aunt died. Miss Tinne returned to Cairo by Berber and Suakin. The geographical and scientific results of the expedition were highly important. A description, by T. Kotschy and J. Peyritsch, of some of the plants discovered by the expedition was published at Vienna in 1867 under the title of Plantes Tinniennes. At Cairo- Miss Tinne lived in Oriental style during the next four years, visiting Algeria, Tunisia and other parts of the Mediterranean. In January 1869 she started from Tripoli with a caravan, intending to proceed to Lake Chad, and thence by Wadai, Darfur and Kordofan to the upper Nile. On the 16t of August, however, on the route from Murzuk to Ghat, she was murdered, together with two Dutch sailors, by Tuareg in league with her escort, who believed that her iron water tanks were filled with gold.
