Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ferdinand Karl Anton Joseph Johann Stanislaus entered the world on the 1st of June 1754 inside the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. He was the fourteenth child born to Holy Roman Emperor Franz I and his wife Maria Theresa of Austria.
A treaty signed by Francesco III in 1763 bound the nine-year-old Ferdinand to Maria Beatrice Ricciarda d'Este. The Perpetual Imperial Diet officially approved the investiture of Ferdinand with these fiefs in 1771 after an earlier pact from 1753 had designated Peter Leopold as the successor but changed when he inherited Tuscany in 1761.
Napoleon's troops forced the entire family to flee their home in the city when French forces invaded Milan in 1796. This period ended decades of Habsburg governance in northern Italy while Duke Ercole III simultaneously lost control of Modena which joined the Cisalpine Republic.
The Treaty of Pressburg compelled him to cede Breisgau to the Grand Duchy of Baden by 1805. These events stripped him of actual governing power despite holding multiple titles and he lived out his final years without real territory or administrative duties.
Ferdinand and Maria Beatrice produced ten children during their marriage spanning from 1772 to 1787 leaving only seven surviving offspring. Their daughter Maria Ludovika married her first cousin Francis I who became Emperor of Austria while another son Karl served as Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary until his death in 1809.