Her teachers were popular musician and composer Patricio Teixeira and classical guitarist Solon Ayala.

As a teenager in the late 1950s, she became friends with a number of singers and composers who took part in Bossa Nova's musical revolution, including Roberto Menescal, Carlos Lyra, Ronaldo Bôscoli, João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes, and Antônio Carlos Jobim.

There are even voices that claim that it was in her room in her parents' home in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, that the new music was born in the fifties.

In the mid-1960s, the institution of military dictatorship in Brazil led her to sing increasingly political lyrics.

Nara's sister was Danuza Leão, a model and socialite who was also a newspaper columnist and occasional TV commentator.