Like her older sisters, Minerva also received an education at El Colegio Inmaculada Concepción, at the urging of her mother, Mercedes Mirabal.
[2] When she was 22, Minerva had a personal experience with Trujillo, at an elitist party she and her family were invited to, turning down his sexual advances,[4] causing her to be jailed and not able to practice her law degree.
[2] Minerva’s parents feared that her involvement with politics would ultimately get her killed so they did not allow her to register for law school, especially following her rejection of Trujillo.
This resulted in house arrest at her parents' home where she spent her time painting and writing poetry about the injustices she has endured due to the exploitation and dictatorship in her country.
Six years later, however, they changed their minds after realizing how upset this made Minerva, leading to her enrollment at the University of Santo Domingo, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Minerva was married to Manuel Aurelio Tavárez Justo, or Manolo, whom she attended school with and met while on vacation in Jarabacoa in 1954.
The assassinations of the Mirabal sisters, who were also known as The Butterflies, acted as a catalyst for the downfall of Trujillo's regime, which ended about a year after their deaths, because of their national popularity.