Visual working memory (VWM) is limited in capacity, but this limitation may be ameliorated by providing familiar objects that are associated with knowledge stored in long-term memory. For instance, complex but meaningful items can be remembered better than perceptually identical, yet meaningless stimuli (Conci et al., 2021), while active learning of the meaning of previously meaningless objects improves VWM capacity beyond basic stimulus repetition effects (Conci et al., 2023). The current study tested whether the individual strength of memory traces modulates the effect of meaning upon VWM capacity. To this end, a change detection task was performed that required observers to remember pictures of more or less familiar faces. The results revealed that performance improved for unfamiliar, upright faces relative to unfamiliar, yet inverted faces, indicating that holistic face processing influences memory retention (Curby & Gauthier, 2007). Moreover, unfamiliar, upright faces were lower in capacity than pictures of well-known celebrities, thus replicating a benefit of familiarity upon VWM performance (Jackson & Raymond, 2008). Finally, capacity was highest for faces that depicted close friends and family members of the individual participants. This shows that autobiographical memories reveal particularly strong cues for VWM retrieval. Together, these findings thus show that the strength of individual long-term-memories scales with the ability to retain an object in working memory, while this benefit of familiarity upon the short-term retention of visual information is largely independent of perceptual variations in the to-be-remembered stimuli. This demonstrates that VWM performance is boosted by specific knowledge derived from long-term memory.