As her mother could not claim the inheritance left by her husband, which by law should be under the responsibility of her sons, she moved with Eugênia to Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1910s in search of employment.

At sixteen, she was fully integrated into the Bohemian life of the city, including behavior and costumes - smoking cigarillos, she walked by the streets dressed in a suit, tie, and fedora.

[2] Hired by her well-written text and daring attitude, her recruitment caused bewilderment and admiration in a society hitherto accustomed to seeing females presented by the media only as poetesses, feuilletists, and columnists.

Shortly after, the journal prematurely reported the end of her career as a young journalist, who had decided to seek refuge in a boarding school for girls in an orphanage called Asilo Bom Pastor.

As a matter of fact, Eugenia asked to be interned with the sole intention of interviewing Albertina do Nascimento Silva,[2] the sister of a murdered woman in a widely reported crime which became known as "The Tragedy of Dr. Januzzi Street, 13.

The resulting series of articles, published in chapters for five days in a row, snatched a large number of readers, yielding to the author the deserved recognition from colleagues, competitors and the general public, which would come to nickname her as "the first reporter of Brazil".

With the fragmentation of the Brazilian modernist movement after the Revolution of 1930, Eugênia went on to defend along with Alvaro Moreyra, Pagú and Oswald de Andrade, leftist positions, actively participating in the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (National Liberation Alliance), consequently being persecuted by the Vargas government.

[6] Elected for a new term in February 1939, she was prevented from taking office by Filinto Müller, who filled to the Ministry of Labour and Employment a complaint that she was a "communist person mentioned at the Police Department of Security and Social Policy".

[citation needed] In a statement published in the newspaper Correio da Manhã after Eugênia's death, the writer Oswald de Andrade said that "what is due to her one day will be calculated".

[2] In reality, however, is that over the years the important and disruptive activities of Eugênia in a hitherto male-dominated society, specially in places such as the political and unionist sectors, became increasingly underestimated, and like this she remains a character still out of the history books — remembered, if at all, only by her pioneering altruism.