She was born in Würzburg, the youngest of four children born to the marriage of Georg, Prince of Saxe-Meiningen and Countess Klara Maria von Korff genannt Schmissing-Kerssenbrock. Regina was a second cousin of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and a great-great-granddaughter of Princess Feodora of Leiningen, half-sister of Queen Victoria. Although the Saxe-Meiningen dynasty was Protestant, she was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her mother.
Her only sister, Marie Elisabeth, died aged three months in 1923, before Regina"s birth. Regina grew up in the Veste Heldburg which overlooks the Heldburger Land in south Thuringia. Her father, a judge in Meiningen and Hildburghausen, died a captive at the Soviet Prisoner Of War camp at Tschernpowetz on her 21st birthday in 1946.
Her mother had fled with her to West Germany.
From 10 May 1954 until her death Regina and Otto lived together at his official residence in the Villa Austria, also called the Kaiservilla, in Pöcking near Lake Starnberg. On 2 December 2005 she suffered a brain injury and was taken to a hospital in Nancy.
The transfer of the remains of her father thither from Tschernpowetz took place in the spring of 2007. Regina died in Pöcking on 3 February 2010, aged 85, and was entombed at Veste Heldburg on 10 February.
Her remains, except for her heart, were moved to Mariazell and then to the Kaisergruft in Vienna at the time of her husband"s funeral on 16 July 2011.
Archduchess Walburga (born 1958), married Count Archibald Douglas, has issue (a son).
