She has recorded and performed with numerous artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Opa, Stan Getz, George Duke, Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jaco Pastorius, and her husband Airto Moreira.

During this period, she made a recording, entitled Flora e M.P.M., in which she sang bossa nova standards of the day by Carlos Lyra and Roberto Menescal.

[5] After reaching young adulthood, Purim mixed jazz with radical protest songs to defy the repressive Brazilian government of that time.

[5] A 1964 military coup led to censorship of song lyrics, and she later commented on this period of her life as follows: "I wanted to leave Brazil.

[5] Brazilian musician Moacir Santos taught Purim to read and write music in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

Purim also worked with Carlos Santana and Mickey Hart at outdoor festivals and on jazz and classical albums[5] through the 1970s.

In the 1980s Purim toured with Dizzy Gillespie's United Nation Orchestra, culminating with Gillespie's Grammy Award-winning album Live at the Royal Festival Hall released in 1990, and then in the 1990s sang on the Grammy Award-winning album Planet Drum by Mickey Hart, the Grateful Dead drummer.

Later in the 1990s Purim released her own album and world tour, Speed of Light starting with a month at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho, London, with a new band with contributions from Billy Cobham, Freddie Ravel, George Duke, David Zeiher, Walfredo Reyes Jr., Alphonso Johnson, Changuito, Freddie Santiago, and Giovanni Hidalgo, with important writing and performing contributions from Chill Factor and Purim's daughter Diana.

The new millennium saw the release of two recordings: Perpetual Emotion (2001) and a crossover homage to one of Brazil's great composers, Flora sings Milton Nascimento (2000).

In 2002, during a residency at Ronnie Scott's in London, Purim and her husband Airto, collaborated with British producer Darren Allison and renowned flamenco guitarist Juan Martin on the latter's Camino Latino album.

[14] Her vocal style is influenced by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald,[11] which drifts from lyrics to wordlessness without ever losing touch with the melody and rhythm.

[6] Purim was imprisoned at Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California in August 1974 for cocaine possession; she was given the inmate number 2775.

During her year and a half imprisonment from 1974 to 1976, she organized a concert on March 3, 1976, which brought in some famous musicians from the outside: Cannonball Adderley, George Duke, Airto Moreira, Miroslav Vitouš, Raul de Souza and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler.

Her father, Naum Purim (1912–1992), was a Romanian Jewish immigrant from Moghilău, then part of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine).