Born as María Esther Heredia Lecaro in Guayaquil, she was the daughter of a colonel, and lived a life among the upper-class elite, attending social functions and art classes.

In a media interview Capovilla stated her dislike of the fact that women nowadays are permitted to court men, rather than the reverse.

Still, Capovilla was able to sit in her chair and fan herself, and had been doing fine until she succumbed to a bout of pneumonia in the last week of August 2006, 18 days before she would have celebrated her 117th birthday.

[6] At the time of her death aged 116 years and 347 days, Capovilla was originally believed to have been the fourth-oldest verified person to have ever lived.

Capovilla had been the oldest verified South American until Francisca Celsa dos Santos from Brazil surpassed her age on 4 October 2021 and died the next day.