Shortly after her birth the family returned to Portugal, settling in Caldas de Monchique in the Algarve, where her father worked in the spa town.

She also worked with the future PCP leader, Álvaro Cunhal, as part of the editorial team of the weekly magazine O Diabo, which was published between 1934 and 1940, before being closed by the regime's censors.

[1][2][3][4][5] After completing the degree work she started in Lisbon at the University of Coimbra in 1943, Ventura went underground, living a clandestine existence at the request of José Gregório, a member of the Central Committee of the PCP.

On 3 August 1960 she was arrested by the Portuguese secret police, along with her partner at the time, Orlando Lindim Ramos, after 17 years in hiding.

She met and befriended Alexander Dubček, the Czechoslovak communist leader, and Artur London, who would later author the preface to Ventura's book about her experience with socialism.

Moving back to the Algarve in 1976 she became a schoolteacher and, subsequently, a professor at the Instituto Superior Manuel Teixeira Gomes (ISMAT), which belongs to Grupo Lusófona.

In 1984 she wrote O socialismo que eu vivi (The socialism that I lived), in which she recounted her experiences and criticised the oppression that characterized communist regimes.