On 1 May 1860, the Rev P.D. Lückhoff, head of the Rhenish Mission Church at Stellenbosch, founded a private school for girls. It was to provide schooling for the daughters of the Rhenish missionaries who were stationed in South Africa (for more than 30 years already) and would otherwise have had to send their daughters to school in Germany. In the first year there were only 8 pupils in the school but by 1866 there were already 47 girls, many of whom were from the wider Stellenbosch community and not just the daughters of the German missionaries.
