A member of the Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes [pt] (National Academy of Fine Arts) of Portugal, she was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry in 1997.

Maria da Graça Pinto de Almeida Morais was born on 17 March 1948 in the small village of Vieiro, in Freixiel, in the Trás-os-Montes region of northeast Portugal.

[2][3][4][5] In 1974 Morais held her first solo exhibition, at the Museu de Alberto Sampaio [pt] in the town of Guimarães.

In May 1978 she held a solo exhibition in Paris, entitled A Caça (The Hunt), at the Portuguese Cultural Centre.

[2][3] Morais continued to exhibit in 1987, the year in which she began to construct an atelier in her home village of Vieiro.

In 1988, at the request of the noted Portuguese writer, José Saramago, she illustrated a reprint of his book O Ano de 1993 [pt] (The Year of 1993).

In 1990 she exhibited in the then Portuguese colony of Macau, where she met her second husband, Pedro Caldeira Cabral, who was giving a guitar recital.

[2][4] Continuing to be very productive and to exhibit widely, she visited Moscow in 1996, in preparation for the installation of a work of azulejo tile panels in a metro station, which was done in 1997.

She has worked on azulejos in several other locations, including at Fogueteiro train station in Seixal and at Amadora - Falagueira metro station in the Lisbon area; at the municipal market and municipal theatre of Bragança; in a bank and school in Bragança; in a clinic in Mirandela and in the Astrophysics and Planetarium Centre in Porto.

In 2006 she collaborated with the Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen on an exhibition held in Lisbon.

In 2021 her work was included in an exhibition of the work of 40 Portuguese women at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum enitled All I Want (Tudo O Que Eu Quero)[2][13] The life and work of Graça Morais have been the subject of the film documentaries As Escolhidas (The Chosen - 1997) by Margarida Gil, Na Cabeça de uma Mulher está a História de uma Aldeia (In the Head of a Woman is the Story of a Village - 1999) by Joana Morais, and Graça Morais e os Escritores (Graça Morais and the Writers - 2017) by Luís Alves de Matos.