She was born in Valparaíso, Chile, the fourth of seven children to Portuguese emigrants António Martins de Sousa and Olinda Peres.

They lived in the Quinta de China near the Douro River in a home bought by her father before he died in 1874, when she was eight years old.

In 1893 she began studies at the Fine-Arts Academy of Porto, where she was a pupil of João Marques de Oliveira, who greatly influenced her style.

[1] In 1898, she moved to Paris to study painting at the Julian Academy, taking courses with Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant.

She held her first exhibition, then traveled in Europe in the next three years, before finally returning to Portugal in 1901, where she worked as an illustrator and participated regularly in Porto's art scene, exhibiting at the Sociedade de Belas-Artes do Porto, in the Galeria da Misericórdia, and annually in the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, in Lisbon.