[1] She was educated well and she studied languages at the National High School of Lisbon where she was taught by women teachers.

She learnt about natural history, chemistry and physics and read classic and modern literature.

[2] Pestana was publishing radical ideas about women's education and their rights under a nom de plume in the newspaper Vanguardia.

Alice Pestana fits in the panorama of intellectual women in Portugal, among whom we have Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos (1851-1925), Adelaide Cabete (1867-1935), Maria Clara Correia Alves (1869-1948), Beatriz Paes Pinheiro de Lemos (1872-1922), Ana de Castro Osório (1872-1935), Albertina Paraíso (1874-1954), Carolina Beatriz Ângelo (1877-1911), Maria Olga Morais Sarmento da Silveira (1881-1948), Virgínia Guerra Quaresma (1882-1973).

These and others are part of a vast list of women with a markedly feminist, republican, and socialist profile.