She is arguably best known for having been the lover of Virgínia Quaresma, the first female professional journalist in Portugal and one of the first Portuguese to be openly lesbian.

Maria da Cunha Zorro was born in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon on 19 October 1872, to an upper-class family.

She travelled to Rio de Janeiro with Cunha, her lover, for whom she also secured employment with the newspaper, A Época, which had hired her.

A Preface written by her friends the writer, Júlio Dantas, and the Count of Monsaraz led to considerable sales and a new version in 1911 with added poems.

[1][5][6] Maria da Cunha, died suddenly in São Paulo, where she had been expecting to take up a teaching appointment, on 10 January 1917.