Rupp was born in Germany in 1980 and grew up from her youth years in Vienna Austria. Her mother is a  language teacher and her father is a physicist, the family is mixed French-German-Italian. She played competitive piano as a child and struggled to choose between pursuing her love for music and natural sciences. Rupp was active in her teen years in an environmental chemistry group and also an Austrian team member competing internationally at the International Young Physicist Team, where they won 3d place in 1998.