Created by Cristianne Fridman, the telenovela is written by her in collaboration with Paula Richard, Renata Dias Gomes, Camilo Pellegrini and Nélio Abbade.
Pedro is a firefighter which lives in the neighborhood of Tinguá, in the border of Rio de Janeiro and Nova Iguaçu municipalities.
After the sudden death of his parents, Pedro became responsible for the custody of his three brothers: Viviane, Rafael and trouble-maker Antônio, who works on GG ("Gelado-e-Gostoso", which is Portuguese for "Icy-and-Delicious"), a fictional ice cream factory located in Tinguá.
Through a teddy bear encasing a cell phone linked with a powerful bomb, "Phoenix" revealed himself to Vilma to be indeed Leo, partnered with his older sister Darlene, the villainess's former house maid.
After his mother's death, Lipe moves from São Paulo to Nova Iguaçu, and ends up raping Viviane in the forest.
Besides being a legal procedure on rape cases in Brazil, abortion was never treated in a frank and positive way on telenovelas such as it has been on Chamas da Vida.
On the other hand, the telenovela also portrays the drama of women who decide to carry on a pregnancy resulted from rape with the character of Raíssa.
The telenovela was also groundbreaking in Brazil for showing the prejudice transsexual people suffer with the character of Carlão/Docinho (lived by Roberto Bomtempo, one of its directors).
After the end of both Pantanal and Rede Globo's A Favorita, Chamas da Vida rose its audience ratings.
Although its audience rating is higher in Rio than in São Paulo, proportionally Chamas da Vida has almost the double of viewers in the latter.