Edna Troche Cintrón was born in Puerto Rico on October 14, 1954, and moved to New York when she was approximately five years old.

[3] Cintrón grew up on Delancey Street in Lower Manhattan, and her first years of life were spent in an environment of poverty, with her mother working at the city's board of education and having few financial resources.

[3] Edna met her future husband, William Cintrón, in 1987 during a visit to his brother's girlfriend's home in Upper Manhattan.

[3] Residing in a neighborhood in Queens for the last nine years of their marriage, Edna and William used to take cruises, visiting places like Bermuda, Mexico and Jamaica.

[5] Cintrón, a fan of collecting paintings and figures of angels, began working in the southern tip of Manhattan a few years before the attacks, first at the World Financial Center and later at the World Trade Center, in the computer support section of the insurance firm Marsh & McLennan, where she worked as assistant billing administrator on the 97th floor of the North Tower.