Irma Marianne Anna Hecht was born November 6, 1885, in Nuremberg as the first child of the manufacturer Gustav Hecht and his wife Fri(e)da, née Heilbronn. She grew up with her sister Emmy, who was seven years younger. In 1901, shortly before her 16th birthday, Irma Hecht moved to Munich, where she attended grammar school and then university. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant and a private teacher of ancient languages and advertised in the Munich address book. She was not married.
Her father, born on December 31, 1855, died May 3, 1910, in Nuremberg, her mother, born May 26, 1865, in Zweibrücken, died May 11, 1925, in Nuremberg.
From January 23, 1917 to September 1, 1931, Irma lived at Hohenzollernstrasse 61/I, and from September 1, 1931 to January 1, 1933, at Bauerstrasse 10/0.
With the beginning of the National Socialist regime, it became increasingly difficult for Irma Hecht to earn a living as she was Jewish. She moved several times and lived in boarding houses or as subtenants in the immediate vicinity of the university, thus in 1935 at Jakob-Klar-Strasse 9. From September 1, 1939 to October 1, 1939 she lived at Martiusstrasse 8. Unlike her sister Emmy, who in March 1940 fled with her husband Dr. Sigmund Hecht to New York via Liverpool, Irma Hecht remained in Munich. Her sister died in Manhattan in June 1971.
After further moves to Schillerstrasse 10 and Goethestrasse 49, she had to move to the Pension Bavaria at Goethestrasse 51 on March 6, 1941, and from there to the „Jewish Settlement“ Milbertshofen at Knorrstrasse 148. On November 20, 1941, the Gestapo deported her together with around 1,000 other Jews to Kaunas. Five days later, SS men killed Irma Hecht and all the other deportees.
The Gestapo and the Office for Asset Utilization of Munich confiscated her possessions (including 1 dress and 2 coats) and tried to put their hands on a bequest of 2000 Reichsmarks which the Jewish merchant couple Hugo and Lina Steinfeld from Augsburg had bequeathed her in 1941. They had committed suicide together on November 6, 1941.
A plaque at Ohmstraße 13 commemorates Irma Hecht, a commemorative sign in Augsburg commemorates Hugo and Lina Steinfeld.