She was the second child of the couple after her brother Juan Borgia Enriquez and a posthumous daughter: her father had died six months earlier, murdered by unknown assailants.

[1][2][3][4] She grew up in Spain with her mother, without contact with her paternal family: Maria accused her brother-in-law Cesare Borgia of the death of her husband, and her father-in-law Alexander VI of having covered up the fraticide.

She was initially opposed by her mother and the abbess, but Isabella physically resisted leaving the convent and finally managed to obtain permission to become a nun.

According to her sisters, she was a woman of great virtues, elegant, kind, composed and pleasant, capable of discreetly advising and conversing amiably with anyone.

[1][2][3][4] Isabella died in Valladolid on 28 October 1557, while working, together with Joanna of Habsburg, who had asked for her collaboration to found a monastery in which to retire, on the construction of Descalzas Reales in Madrid.