Charlotte Führer worked as a midwife in Montreal where she self-published her only book, in 1881.

Charlotte Heise was born in Hanover, Germany, to Friedrich Christian Heise and Luise Georgine Wilhelmine Osterwald. Her father died when she was an adolescent, and at age seventeen she began working as a governess. She married Ferdinand Adolph Führer (1826-1910) in 1853, and the couple moved to New York shortly thereafter. They had two children while in the United States, and later had four more.

After Ferdinand's attempts to set up business as a merchant failed, they moved back to Hanover, Germany. Determined to restore their finances, Charlotte studied as a midwife at a maternity hospital in Hamburg, Germany, between 1856 and 1859. Though she claimed she had received a diploma in midwifery from the University of Hamburg, it is unclear if this is true; it is possible she may have only studied under a trained physician in obstetrics at the hospital. Apparently, she had been inspired to pick up the career after her children born in America were delivered by a male doctor: she felt that North America needed female midwives in order to maintain moral modesty.

The Führers returned to North America in 1859, settling in Montreal, Canada East. Charlotte set up her practice as a midwife, which she continued until shortly before her death. She also ran a maternity residence where women could stay for the last few weeks of their pregnancies. Often these women were of labouring and middle-class families. According to Charlotte's accounts, when the child was illegitimate, she would be responsible for putting it up for adoption or placing it in an orphanage. In her role as midwife and maternity confidante, Charlotte often sought to "return errant women to lives of virtue." In this way, her work reflected the modes of Victorian sexual morality.

Written partially for entertainment, but also to expound the evils of immoral behaviour, Charlotte's only book, was self-published in 1881. Although the book purports to recount case studies from Charlotte's experiences, its sensationalist tone suggests that it was as much an entertainment as it was a cautionary tale. was never reviewed, nor is there a record of how many copies were printed, but it is an important account in that it depicts in some ways the medical and cultural history of mid-Victorian Montreal.

Little else is known about Charlotte's life, although her descriptions of the period shed light on a period that was seldom documented. Charlotte died of cancer on 5 November 1907 in Montreal. For a more detailed biography, see her entry in the .