She was the daughter of the writer and patriot Esteban Borrero Echevarría and of Consuelo Pierra.

The poet Julian de Casal was a family friend and became her literary mentor.

[1] In 1887, she entered the San Alejandro Arts Academy; by 1891 her poems were being published in magazines around Cuba, including La Habana Elegante, one of the leading periodicals of the time.

Her gravesite was unidentified until a 1972 study by the Cuban Society of Archaeology and Ethnology in Exile.

Her body was exhumed and transferred to her own tomb, with the inscription "Glory of Cuba" on her tombstone.