The parents, educated members of the middle class who ran a tanning business, recognised her intellectual potential.

Her father recognised his daughter's emerging interest in the exact sciences and taught her algebra and geometry, so that she could follow him into the business.

Lejeune introduced Libert to the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, who encouraged her to work on cryptogamic flora.

[4] The German mycologist Anton de Bary built on this discovery, among other work, when he showed in 1876 that the oomycete, Phytophthora infestans as he renamed it, was the cause of late blight, and not the consequence as was still believed at the time.

In the last years of her life, when her age no longer allowed her to move around the countryside easily, she devoted considerable time to the history of the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy.

[3] The taxa Libertia (a genus in the family Iridaceae), as well as Asterolibertia,[6] Libertiella and Myxolibertella (genera of ascomycete fungi),[7] were all named after her.

In 1965, the centenary of her death, a stele decorated with a medallion bearing her likeness was erected in the Tanneries Park (Parc Marie-Anne Libert) in Malmedy.

[2] Felix von Thümen issued several fascicles of his exsiccata series Mycotheca universalis with the subtitle Reliquiae Libertianae and distributed specimens collected by M.-A.