The eldest daughter of Herod Agrippa I. She was present when the apostle Paul spoke to her brother, King Agrippa II (Acts 25:13, 23; 26:30).
Bernice, also spelled Berenice, was born around AD 28. At the age of 13, she married Marcus, the son of a Jewish official named Alexander. After Marcus died, her father arranged for her to marry his elder brother, Herod of Chalcis. Bernice had two sons, Bernicianus and Hyrcanus, before her second husband died in AD 48. When her relationship with her brother, Agrippa II, became closer, rumors of incest began to spread. To counter these rumors, Bernice convinced Polemo, the king of Cilicia, to marry her, but she left him soon after.
In AD 66, Bernice courageously but unsuccessfully tried to stop the Roman procurator Gessius Florus from plundering the temple in Jerusalem. She stood by her brother’s side when he warned the people against going to war. When the war began that same year, Jewish rebels burned down her palace and her brother's.