Her parents were Sebastiana de la Pulla Corteza and Julián Santa María Miranda.

She was motivated by a desire to serve, the example her parents set for her, and the severe poverty that afflicted the majority of the Ecuadorian population.

[citation needed] In 1866, Juana Miranda Patrona had a paid job, which was unusual for a woman in Quito at the time.

[citation needed] These obstetrics classes at the university were part of President García Moreno's larger plan to create a women's hospital in Quito.

[5] Miranda Petrona longed to direct such a hospital; however, with the assassination of García Moreno in 1875, her dreams were frustrated.

[6] On November 1, 1899, after a long fight, Juana Miranda Petrona founded a women's hospital in Quito, then known as "Vallejo Rodríguez Asylum.

"[6] In 1900, Miranda Petrona competed with others to be the faculty chair representing obstetrics at the Central University of Ecuador.

Due to the intense power dispute between Antonio Borrero and Ignacio de Veintemilla, both briefly fled Ecuador for Chile in the late 1870s.