Cruz e Silva was born as Odete Abreu Beirão on 26 July 1960 in Samora Correia, a parish in the Benavente municipality in the Santarém District of Portugal.
In 1984, she married Edgar Figueiredo da Cruz e Silva, who worked in the same technical area as her and with whom she had two sons.
They then returned to Portugal to establish the Centre for Cellular Biology (CBC) in the University of Aveiro.
The work of Cruz e Silva and her colleagues described a curious distribution of APP (Alzheimer's precursor protein) in sperm.
[2][4] Her work has been recognized with an award from the Astra Zeneca Foundation and she received the Gulbenkian Prize for stimulating research.