Rosa Inés Curiel Pichardo was born on 15 March 1963, in Santiago, Dominican Republic, and attended primary school at the Women's Polytechnic Our Lady of Mercy.

[2] In the late 1980s, she began working at the Dominican Center for Education Studies in Santo Domingo and co-founded Ce-mujer, a women's NGO and advisory group.

[3] At the time, there was a nascent feminist movement in the Dominican Republic, which was more closely tied to Latin American identification than to Afro-Caribbean, despite the fact that the country was predominantly Afro-Dominican.

[4] Efforts were small grassroots activist organizations addressing the needs of individual communities or groups,[5] but two voices, Curiel and Sergia Galvan began pressing for broader discussions on women's issues which included racism and sexism.

[4] The conference, held in Santo Domingo between 19 and 25 July 1992, brought together over 300 participants from 32 countries to discuss how systemic bias has obscured the accomplishments of black women and develop strategies to improve their lives.

[4] Curiel's theory sets forth the idea that lesbianism is neither an identity, orientation nor sexual preference, but rather a political position, which strives to counterbalance the heteronormativity of laws, media, religion, and other aspects of society.

Curiel felt that part of the discussion was missing because Latin American women's voices were not heard in Europe while some European works were not available to Latinas because of language variances.

[4] As she became more immersed in indigenous and African theory and culture, Curiel recognized that pre-colonial societies, such and the Inca and Aztec[17] along with those in Kenya, South Africa and others,[18] had differing social constructs centering on community strength, rather than top-down power arrangements.