Descended from the Hohenlohe dynasty, he was the son of Prince Karl Albrecht I. zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (22 September 1719 - 25 January 1793) and his first wife Sophie Wilhelmine zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rochefort (7 August 1720 - 29 September 1749).
Educated by Jesuits, he studied in Parma and Strasbourg and was ordained priest in Cologne on 7 April 1787.
He later served as dean of Ellwangen Abbey and a canon in Cologne, Vienna and Strasbourg. Under Prince Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, the last Prince-Bishop of Augbsurg, Hohenlohe was appointed as an auxiliary bishop in the Augsburg diocese and titular bishop of Tempe, both on 9 August 1802, shortly before it was secularised. He was consecrated as a bishop of 5 September 1802 by Clemens in the Pfarrkirche in Marktoberdorf, with the assistance of the abbots of Saint Mang"s Abbey and Irsee Abbey.
When the prince-bishopric was secularised, it initially remained within its existing borders.
