A scion of the prestigious Mourousis and Sturdza families, he was the son of adventurer Constantin D. Moruzi, who had switched his allegiance between Moldavia, Russia, and the United Principalities.

The latter brought Moruzi into contact with his Sămănătorist circle, hosting his memoirs and articles in Neamul Românesc and Unirea, and welcoming him into the ranks of the Democratic Nationalist Party.

Dumitru Moruzi belonged to the Mourousis family, which formed part of a wave of Greek immigrants to Moldavia; integrated by the local aristocracy, or boyardom, they had originated in the Empire of Trebizond and settled in Istanbul in the 17th century.

[9] A claim to the Moldavian inheritance was stated by one of Dumitru's paternal uncles, Alexandru "Alecu" Moruzi (c. 1815–1878),[10] who married a daughter of Hatman Răducanu Ruset (Rosetti).

[15] Alecu was swiftly arrested and deported into the Danube Vilayet; Constantin became an outlaw and was widely suspected of collecting another private army, before being captured and expelled to Russia.

[24] In March 1857, following the death of Caimacam Teodor Balș, Alecu Moruzi was credited with real chances of succeeding him as Prince, but the regency was prolonged, and went to Nicolae Vogoride.

[25] According to Kogălniceanu, Alecu was an absentee landlord and an apolitical figure throughout most of the decade, before finally taking a seat in the 1858 Assembly;[26] other accounts suggest that he had rallied with the National Party, before becoming a civilian administrator of Galați.

[30] He joined other boyars in resisting Cuza and Kogălniceanu's land reform project, favoring a more conservative proposal also advanced in Parliament by Dimitrie Ghica and Apostol Arsache.

[21][38] Unwelcome in Romania, from 1869 Constantin was recognized as a Knyaz and received into Russian nobility,[39] serving terms as deputy in the Zemstvo of Bălți County, where he supported Bessarabian autonomism.

There, in April 1878, he entered a joint commission for analyzing protests by Romanian civilians against Russian troops transiting the country, sitting for over a year until the group was dissolved.

[53] In June 1887,[55] Moruzi was named administrator and deputy prefect at the Port of Sulina, in the Danube Delta, taking anti-flood measures and organizing a volunteer fire brigade on the Austrian model.

[57] By his own account, he had to tolerate the Lipovans, who had selected as their physician an under-trained Russian political exile, Peter "Doctor Petru" Alexandrov, and who rarely reported deaths in the community.

According this source, Moruzi had never modernized the latrines of his very own administrative palace, and never sanitized the drinking water, instead spending money on "fanciful products"—including the theater, but also "empty cabins on the seashore".

[1] In mid-1895, Dumitru's half-brother Alexandru visited Sulina and spent three weeks there; rumors in the press had it that two frigates of the Imperial Russian Navy had guarded the port throughout that interval.

[1][65] It was poorly reviewed by journalist Emil Fagure, who noted that it had overall the quality of a café-chantant, and that Petre Liciu, cast as a Jewish stereotype, could not hope to rescue the performance.

Yet, "nobody knows the goings-on of his life, not even his well-off relatives with their rightful princely splendor; only now and then do young students visit him, keen on learning from his sweet elderly voice the stories of his parents' Bessarabia.

[1][66] He began an intense work in journalism with Basarabia și viitorul ei 1812–1905 ("Bessarabia and Her Future 1812–1905"), first published in Cronica newspaper from February 1905, and in book form later that year.

[74] He joined Iorga's Democratic Nationalist Party (PND) upon its creation in 1910, but refused to read the statutes, simply believing them consonant with his own brand of nationalism.

[53] He remained critical of anti-elitist factions within the PND; seen by historian Florin Marinescu as a "staunch antisemite",[1] Moruzi declared that "the job of playing off classes against each other should be left to kikes and socialists".

[76] Iorga himself recommended Moruzi, alongside Henri Stahl, Romulus Cioflec and Ion Agârbiceanu, as a canon of traditionalist writing in prose at Neamul Românesc.

[80] Other parts of the book, showing debates between the Varlaams and Prince Ghica or Alexandru Ioan Cuza, take a more conservative stance, insisting upon class collaboration; the narrator praises Carol and Lascăr Catargiu for having found and preserved a moderate course.

[90] George Călinescu only wrote a brief note about him, setting down an incorrect birth year; Petre V. Haneș, in his 1942 study of Bessarabian writers, devotes much more ample space to analyzing the works of Moruzi.

[1] Ideology seeps into Pribegi în țară răpită and, prompting literary historian Gheorghe Bezviconi to suggest that its "useless, entirely valueless, dialogues" be stripped from future editions.

[1] The same year, which marked a century of Russian administration in Bessarabia, he published a book called Basarabia noastră and a collection of folk songs, Cântece basarabene.

He declared himself outraged that the Romanian Orthodox Church had allowed Alexandrov's "civil funeral" to take place in a Christian cemetery, and expressed additional consternation that Bessarabians Arbore and Constantin Stere had agreed to attend.

[95] Introduced as a "university professor", Moruzi also joined the Iași Committee which prepared the commemoration of Bessarabia's annexation; his colleagues there were Xenopol, Stere, Corneliu Șumuleanu, and Unirea's A. C. Cuza.

[64] According to critic Radu Dragnea, Moruzi did not fit the stylistic mold of the 1910s, "as if there is no literature out there for him to acknowledge";[98] also, according to Carp, the Knyaz detested the work of Romanian Symbolists, showing in this similarities with traditionalists such as Ion Gorun, George Panu, and Mihail Sadoveanu.

In one of his final contributions, published as an Evenimentul op-ed in July 1914, Moruzi asked that the country independently declare war on Austria-Hungary, in order to both assert her territorial demands and spite Russia.

[1][107] Cuza referred to Moruzi as a "man of generous vision [and] honestly nationalist ideas", arguing that his worldview was shaped by "the truth of Christian teachings" and by a commitment to the Romanian Orthodox Church.

[112] The Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, then the impact of World War II, returned him to near-complete anonymity: Moruzi was indexed and censored in both Communist Romania and the Moldovan SSR.