After her parents died, she moved with her sister to Szászváros, now in Romania, where she began to study the snail farms she found in Hunedoara County.

In 1875, she was encouraged by Flóris Rómer [hu], considered by some to be the father of Hungarian archeology, to begin her own excavations of the ancient settlement of Tordos (present-dat Turdaș), along the Mureș River.

The symbols and scripts on clay objects she found during an excavation in Hunyad County became an archaeological sensation.

She also struggled with archeologists in her own country, who "ridiculed and ignored her, as a woman and amateur in the field of archaeology, as well as her groundbreaking ideas and efforts.

Torma had an important role in the founding of the National Museum of Transylvanian History of Kolozsvár (present-day Cluj-Napoca).