Born in São Paulo in 1894, her father, Adolfo Lutz, was a pioneering physician in the fight against epidemics. Her mother, British-born Amy Marie Gertrude Fowler, was a nurse. Passionate about biology, Bertha graduated in natural sciences from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She received a scholarship in London from the British Council, an experience that influenced her scientific discoveries.

It was also in London that she had her first contact with the Feminist Movement. During her periods of study, she tried to participate in protests for women’s suffrage, but faced resistance from her mother who feared her deportation.

Bertha Lutz approached international movements and founded, in Brazil, the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress. The group was an offshoot of the 1st Pan-American Conference of Women which took place in Baltimore in the United States in 1922. Bertha’s feminism can therefore be considered as a translation and a re-signification of the feminisms of England and the United States.

In national politics, she took over as an alternate federal deputy for the Federal District in 1936. She was the second woman to earn this position in Brazil. In her mandate, she brought the fight for equality as her flag, until the Estado Novo dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas closed the National Congress, in 1937.

For Bertha, the female struggle was also for equality in education. It was Bertha who fought for the admission of women to Colégio Dom Pedro II in Rio de Janeiro which until then, was exclusively for boys. At that time, education for women was one of the main means of female social ascension.

Bertha Lutz died in 1976. In addition to conquests and treaties on the female issue, she advanced in the natural sciences. In good humanist tradition, she dedicated her life to the pursuit of truth, equality and justice.