[1][2][3] Stories and details about William O'Brien's highly publicised arrests during the Plan of Campaign led both the mother and daughter to become interested in Ireland and the political situation there.

[1][3][4] She married O'Brien on 11 June 1890 and the wedding was attended by Charles Stewart Parnell, a major gathering of the Irish party before they split later in the year.

Her husband relied heavily on Raffalovich as a funding source, secretary and nurse during the periods of his career where his health was poor.

She worked with Sister Mary Eustace Eaton of the Harold's Cross Hospice for the Dying and wrote a biography of her life in 1923.

Having had no children and with her husband unwilling to adopt, Raffalovich chose to support girls who still lived with their families but lacked other advantages.

[1][2][3][4] The results of the Irish Famines were still visible among the people in Connacht while the couple were living there and they were actively involved in local relief work in 1897–1898.

O'Brien was clear that land redistribution was the means for ameliorating the situation and Raffalovich became the primary backer of the United Irish League.

Raffalovich continued to fund his political activities despite the heavy financial expense when he founded the daily newspaper, the Cork Free Press.

Although her husband was in favour of it and she appeared with him when he spoke, she never supported it and refused to allow her name to be added to the electoral register when women won the right to vote.

Raffalovich felt it was her duty to ensure his memory was intact and she spent some years working through the papers and documents he left behind.

[1] In earlier years Raffalovich had considered that she would join her friend's convent if her husband died but in 1933 she realised she was too old for such a change and that her home in Cork was too large for her alone, she moved back to France near Amiens, to live with sisters Fernande and Lucie Guilmart who had been pupils of the Amiens orphanage and school she had supported since the 1880s.

However she was extremely impoverished by the end of the war though she continued to live with the Guilmart sisters this time at Neuilly-St Front, near Soissons.