Ghaoui introduced Samira to the Egyptian musician Tawfiq Bayoumi who taught her the tawashih musical form.

Her first hit on Radio Beirut was a song originally sung by Bayoumi called Maskin Ya Qalbi Yama Tlaawat ("Oh My Heart How You Have Suffered").

[5] She struggled for success in Lebanon,[6][7] due to the highly popular competing acts of Fairuz, Sabah and Wadi al-Safi,[6] but she excelled after basing herself in Jordan in the 1960s and 1970s.

[4] Her most commercially successful love song was Al Eyn Mulayitain ("Two Trips to the Water Spring"), which was about a rural girl who crosses a bridge multiple times a day ostensibly to collect water for her family, but with the actual intent of meeting a young man she is in love with.

[8] Samira is generally considered the first major artist to represent Jordanian music and make it popular in the Arab world.