[1] Encouraged to write by her husband, José Isidro dos Santos, Freire first published a collection of poems in 1935, called Castelos de sonho (Dream castles), at the age of 17.

At that early age, she already showed a mastery of form and a musical sensibility and this had fully matured by the time Horizonte fechado (Closed horizon) was published, her fourth collection, in 1942.

From 1972 she was a member of the Reading Committee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and from 1980 she was on the jury of the pt: Fundação Oriente literary prize on several occasions.

She was active as a lecturer and organizer of cultural events, with particular emphasis on poetic afternoons, which were held at the D. Maria II National Theatre in Lisbon in 1965.

Researchers of her literary estate discovered that she had connections to an American Rosicrucian organization, and that she was a donor to a foundation promoting the charismatic renewal of the Catholic Church in Portugal.