Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1853 as the son of the landscape painter Carl Morgenstern. Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern began an apprenticeship as a business man, which he soon stopped. A short time later, in 1872, he went to Paris to take painting lessons. That very same year, Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern returned to Frankfurt and attended painting lessons under Johann Heinrich Hasselhorst, Gustav Kaupert and Eduard von Steinle at the "Städelsche Kunstinstitut".
Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern also worked in his father's studio, and was inspired by the style of his father's oeuvre, which included landscapes and vedute. He undertook several study trips to Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, England and Scotland. Only after the death of his father, in 1893, did Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern manage to develop his own Impressionist style and artistic expression.
Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern did not immediately belong to the Kronberg painters' colony, but entertained friendly links with these artists in the Taunus region, just like his father and grandfather had gone to Kronberg before him.
In 1919 Friedrich Ernst Morgenstern, the youngest and last representative of this Frankfurt dynasty of painters died in his home town.