Benigna Justine von Watteville died on 11 May 1789 in Herrnhut, Saxony, after a lifetime of missionary and educational leadership in the Moravian Church.
Benigna Justine von Watteville, née Zinzendorf, died on 11 May 1789 in Herrnhut, Saxony, the very Moravian settlement near which she had been born sixty-three years earlier. Her death marked the passing of one of the last direct links to the founding generation of the renewed Moravian Church, led by her father Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf.
By the time of her death, Benigna had lived a life spanning continents and decades of service to the Moravian community: from her transatlantic missionary journey as a teenager, to her founding of a pioneering girls' boarding school in colonial Pennsylvania, to her marriage to Bishop Johannes von Watteville and her continued involvement in church affairs across Europe.
Her passing was mourned within the tightly-knit Moravian community both in Europe and in the American settlements she had helped establish. The educational institution she founded in 1742 had, by 1789, become a stable and respected part of Bethlehem's religious and civic life, ensuring that her legacy would extend well beyond her own lifetime.
Benigna von Watteville's death closed a life notable for its unusual scope of activity and leadership for a woman of the eighteenth century. Her enduring legacy is preserved today in Moravian College (Moravian University) and Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, institutions that trace their lineage directly to the school she founded as a teenage girl newly arrived in the American colonies.