After moving to Rome upon marriage, the poet taught English language and literature at the Liceo scientifico Cavour for ten years, from 1965 to 1975.

[citation needed] Guidacci is noted for her Italian translations of English poets, including John Donne's sermons and Emily Dickinson's poetry.

[7] The English usage of the word paparazzi is credited to Margherita Guidacci's translation of Victorian writer George Gissing's travel book By the Ionian Sea (1901).

The name was in turn chosen by Ennio Flaiano, the screenwriter of the Federico Fellini film, La Dolce Vita, who got it from Guidacci's book.

By the late 1960s, the word, usually in the Italian plural form paparazzi, had entered the English lexicon as a generic term for intrusive photographers.