His father Aleksa was captain of frontier-guards near the Austrian-Ottoman border. For his merit he was awarded with noble title by Austrian empress Maria Theresia.
Education
After he graduated school in Graz, Vrhovac joined the army but soon left it when he realized that he did not qualify for this occupation, and instead joined Zagreb seminary. Vrhovac studied in Vienna and Bologna, and then became a vice-rector, and later rector, at the seminary in Zagreb, as well as a professor of dogma at the Academy in Zagreb. Emperor Joseph II promoted him to rector of the seminary in Pest, before he returned to Croatia as a bishop.
Promoter of Ilyrian language
In 1808 he went to the Croatian Parliament, requesting his library be opened to the public. In the 1810s, Vrhovac tried to translate the Bible into Kajkavian Croatian language. Other contributors in the program were: Antun Vranić, Ivan Nepomuk Labaš, Ivan Gusić, Ivan Birling, Stjepan Korolija, and Tomaš Mikloušić. In 1810 Vrhovac visited Vienna and during this visit Jernej Kopitar asked him to organize collection of the local songs, but this attempt was not successful. To promote Ilyrian language Vrhovac established printing house and printed books on kajkavian and štokavian. Vrhovac sent this books to Jernej Kopitar who disagreed with Vrhovac and emphasized that štokavian dialectbelongs toSerbian language, kajkavian to Slovenian and only čakavian to Croatian language, underlining that štokavian literature published in Croatia is actually a literature of Catholic Sloveno-Serbs. The ambition of the movement centered in Zagreb was to promote štokavian dialect as language of most of Croats and Serbs. Vrhovac continued to pursue his own perception about the language and people and after Napoleon captured the territory of Austria-Hungary, he issued a proclamation in 1813 to "natives across Sava" emphasizing with triumph that there are no more borders between Croats in Croatia, Dalmatia and the Coastal region. After the defeat of Napoleon in Russia and return of Austria-Hungary to its borders from 1806, the court in Vienna resented Vrhovac for his earlier behavior. Vrhovac was a distinguished opponent of the expansion of Hungarian influence to South Slavs. Vrhovac was most determined and open opposition to establishing a journal on Serbian language in Vienna. Under influence of Vuk Karadžić, Vrhovac instructed his clergy to start with a collection of poetry sung by the population of the region. To defend his perception of the "Croatian language" Vrhovac raised against Kopitar and visited him in 1914 to present him his arguments that Croatian language encompass štokavian and kajkavian dialect. Vrhovac and two of his canoniks, Korolija and Mahanović, failed to convince Kopitar that kajkavian and štokavian dialects belong to Croatian language. In 1814 Vrhovac's cannon Mahanović, based on the instructions of Vrhovac, published a work titled Observationes circa croaticam ortho-graphiam without taking in consideration position regarding čakavian being only dialect of Croatian language presented by Jernej Kopitar. Nevetheless, Mahanović did somewhat follow idea of Kopitar to develop unified orthography for all South Slavic languages.
