1424 – Toledo, Castile, 16 August 1492), born Beatriz de Menezes da Silva, was a Portuguese noblewoman who became the foundress of the monastic Order of the Immaculate Conception (known as the Conceptionists).

Beatrice was one of the eleven children of Rui Gomes da Silva, the governor of Campo Maior, Portugal,[1] and of Isabel de Menezes, an illegitimate daughter of Dom Pedro de Menezes, 1st Count of Vila Real and 2nd Count of Viana do Alentejo, in whose army her father was serving at the time of her birth.

She was long thought to have been born in the Portuguese enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, where her father was serving as a military commander at that time.

[3] In 1484 Beatrice, with some companions, took possession of a palace in Toledo set apart for them by Queen Isabella I of Castile for the new community under the name Monastery of the Holy Faith, which was to be dedicated to honoring the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

In 1489, by permission of Pope Innocent VIII, the nuns adopted the Cistercian Rule,[3] bound themselves to the daily recitation of the office of the Immaculate Conception, and were placed under obedience to the ordinary of the archdiocese.