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Irma La Fer de la Motte was born on 15 April 1816 at a place called Fours-à-Chau(CT JSTOR only) near the town of Saint-Servan in Brittany to Louis Charles Le Fer de La Motte and Eugénie de Guinguené. She was the fourth child, and received much of her early religious education from her maternal grandmother, Jeanne Marie Eugénie de Guinguené (née de Talhouët, who had been widowed since the Quibéron mutinies). Although generally living a normal childhood and having a lively temper, her interest in religion led her to attempt to convert a Protestant girl with whom she attended school, even before her First Communion. At the age of 13, she chosen to be the godmother of her younger sister Clementine, the eleventh child of her parents, an event that she recalled made her so happy she "leaped for joy".(CT life letters chapter 1)

The La Fer de la Motte family (who was of minor nobility) lost much of their income during the French Revolution of 1830, and the elder daughters had to take the places of the maids. Irma, who had little aptitude for household duties, was instead made teacher of her younger brothers (and her goddaughter). She does not seem to have lamented the decrease in affluence much, and reportedly took an almost poetic affection to the natural landscape around her house, praising the nearby Rance river and the ocean especially. During that time, she wrote to a friend living at Rennes who apparently had refused to visit, discarding an alleged "simplicity" as not being negative, and gave descriptions of her family's piety, which she called a "convent".(CT life letters chapter 2)

As a teenager, Irma experienced a difficult period of frequent daydreaming and failing health, and she was sent to one of her aunts, who purposed to "care for both [her] mind and body".(CT life letters chapter 3 p20) A friend of the family, Abbé Cardonnet, continued to teach her Latin there, and tried to help her return to being rooted in reality. However, the death of her closest friend, Angelina Payan, from consumption at the age of 18 shook her deeply, especially since she had been denied from visiting her due to the disease. Irma, who was just one year older, in her grief "saw the nothingness of earthly things"(CT life letters chapter 3 p24). As a result, she returned to her religious devotion, writing to one of Angelina's sisters:

There remains to me still a Friend whom alone I wish to love. He does not die, He will not abandon me. [...] In Him thenceforth I place my happiness and all my hope; my future will be heaven, and death will be to me a gain.^[10]