Farfante went on to attend the Complutense University of Madrid, only to be sent back to Cuba, since her family were Republicans, during the Spanish Civil War.
Barbour promised to help her obtain work there, and followed through, from 1946 until 1948 she was Associate Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.
In 1948, she earned her Ph.D. from Radcliffe, making her the first Cuban woman to obtain her doctoral degree from an Ivy League school.
During this time, Pérez Farfante and husband Gerardo Canet supported the change of government with Fidel Castro.
[2] They sent their sons to the United States and a month later the two fled Cuba, leaving behind all their personal items, except one suitcase.
Farfante continued participating in the field by assisting with collections at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami.
While at the National Museum of Natural History she completed her "masterpiece,"[2] "Penaeoid and Sergestoid Shrimps and Prawns of the World.
Keys and Diagnoses for the Families and Genera," alongside Brian Kensley and illustrator Molly Kelly Bryan.
In her later years, while assisting at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, she co-authored a paper about Sergestoidea and Penaeidae shrimp in the Tongue of the Ocean.