"It was love at first sight", wrote Habib Bourguiba in his autobiography Ma vie, mon œuvre (French: "My Life, My Work").

Through her budding relationship with Bourguiba, she had a considerable influence over the abolition of the monarchy of the Bey of Tunis and promoted the proclamation of a republic on 25 July 1957.

After this, she strongly supported Ahmed Ben Salah, who was appointed on 29 July 1957 as Secretary of State for Public Health and Social Affairs, a minister-equivalent role.

She was also the main architect of the installation of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat in Tunis following their evacuation from Beirut in 1982.

She is the aunt of Tunisian-French film producer and distributor Tarak Ben Ammar,[6][7] and the grandmother of Yasmine Tordjman-Besson who became the second wife of the French Minister Eric Besson.