Anna Tuxen Ladegaard was born in Aarhus as the daughter of an engineer. She worked in tourism in Denmark and abroad and lived in northern and southern Europe and for seven years in Rhodesia. From 1952 to 1953 she was employed at the Danish Embassy in Stockholm. She studied commercial language, studied in London, was divorced, and lived in Spain.
From 1933, she worked with different types of journalistic and literary writing until her debut in 1966 with Opbrud i oktober. The novel is set in Rhodesia and is the story of a young woman with multiple national roots who spent her childhood in a concentration camp and breaks away from a narrow-minded milieu and marriage. Anna Ladegaard subsequently produced a large number of novels which combine European history and family history. She also describes the attempt by the usually female protagonist to break away from the political and private moral constraints of history. World War II is the pivotal point in Hvor var Hannah Jacoby? (N), 1968, and Egoisterne (N), 1973, while in En kort episode i landets historie (N), 1975, Anna Ladegaard returns to the Rhodesian theme. Her other titles are Her på bjerget (N), 1988, Genfortælling (N), 1993, and Mest om Hans-Adam (novella and short story), 1995.
