How long she was enrolled in the Rambert School is not known, as there are no records of students, but only of performers,[1] but her training there was referenced by Dame Ninette de Valois.

[1] Her early dance and music awards include: In the autumn of 1933, she returned with her family to their native Mallow in County Cork.

During the 1930s she took part in the Cork Feis, annual art competitions with a focus on traditional dance and music, competing in Irish step-dancing, war pipes and operatic solo singing.

[1] In 1945 the composer Aloys Fleischmann invited her to perform in his Clare's Dragoons for baritone, war pipes, choir and orchestra, which had been commissioned by the national broadcasting company, Radio Éireann, for the Thomas Davis centenary.

Moriarty agreed, on condition that his Cork Symphony Orchestra would play for her Ballet Company's annual performances, which marked the beginning of a lifelong collaboration.

[4] Branches of the Moriarty School of Dance were established in Bandon, Clonmel, Fermoy, Killarney, Mallow, Tralee, Waterford, Youghal.

From 1970 to 1973 it had very successful appearances in Dublin, in 1971–73 performing with the Cork Symphony Orchestra for a week at the Gaiety Theatre to packed houses.

In 1992 the Ballet Week was given in tribute to its founder, who had died in January of that year; the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, attended the opening.

[7] Irish Theatre Ballet was founded by Moriarty in the summer of 1959, and gave its first performance in December 1959 in the presence of its patron, Marie Rambert.

[citation needed] Irish Theatre Ballet received a small grant from the Arts Council of Ireland, and aid from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, but depended mainly on funding from business and private patrons.

In an attempt to resolve the constant financial difficulties, the Arts Council in 1963 insisted on a merger with Patricia Ryan's Dublin National Ballet.

She attended the first performance unannounced and donated half the Dutch Erasmus Prize, which she had just received, so that Moriarty could bring in distinguished teachers for special courses.

Conditions were difficult for the dancers: salaries were small, as was the grant with which the company had to make do; the buildings that had to be used for training and rehearsal were far from ideal; performance facilities in the provincial centres were often dire.

[citation needed] In 1975, for instance, Sir Anton Dolin, Toni Beck and John Gilpin came to Cork to produce some of their works with the company.

The Israeli choreographer, Domy Reiter-Soffer, who had been a member of Irish Theatre Ballet, became the company's artistic advisor and created many new works of great range in theme and type.

Moriarty's ballet, based on Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, was commissioned for the Dublin Theatre Festival of 1978, with music played live by The Chieftains, was acclaimed.

In 1981, the Dublin Theatre Festival commissioned Moriarty again; she created a 3-act ballet based on the old Irish epic The Táin; Fleischmann composed the music, and Patrick Murray designed the sets.

[10] The Council allotted a mere 7.6% of its budget to dance, and a large portion of that went to Irish National Ballet, though the grant was not substantial enough to keep the company out of debt.

The report proposed a sharp reduction of the already inadequate budget of the Irish National Ballet, while requiring it to incur greater expenses through increased touring and procuring the funds needed from corporate sources.

Moriarty was succeeded by the Finnish dancer and choreographer, Anneli Vourenjuuri-Robinson, who sought to implement a three-year plan accepted by the Arts Council.

But in 1988 the Council decided to withdraw its grant before the end of the three-year period, and also terminated funding for Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre.

Seán Ó Riada, A. J. Potter, and Dame Elizabeth Maconchy Le Fanu orchestrated works originally written for the piano: Puck Fair (1948), Papillons (1952), and Full Moon for the Bride (1974).

It was premiered in June 1983 in Dublin's Abbey Theatre with Irish National Ballet accompanied by the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colman Pearce.

[15] During the last years of her life, she suffered ill health, but continued her work with the Cork Ballet Company, bringing the shows to towns in the county.