Brazilian botanist Graziela Barroso was born in Corumbá, Mato Grosso, and married at the age of 16. Her husband, Liberato Joaquim Barroso, was an agronomist and systematist at the Botanic Garden of Rio de Janeiro. When her two children had grown up and Barroso was in her thirties she joined the botanic garden with her husband, first as an apprentice and later as curator and research chairman. She maintained a life long association with the Botanic Gardens and was a beloved and central member: it was often referred to as Dona Graziela's Garden. Her husband died in 1949, the same year she described her first new genus and began her formal education. Barroso studied at the University of Guanabara (now the State University of Rio de Janeiro) and despite the tragic death of her son in her second year (a pilot in an aeroplane accident) she continued her studies and graduated in 1961. Around this time Brazil was under military dictatorship and she was targeted as a political dissident, having a number of 'run-ins' with the police of the regime. In the 60s she moved to Brasília and became Chairman and Professor of the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Brasília, where she remained until 1969. She also worked at the Ministry of Agriculture during this time. Barroso gained her PhD from the State University of Campinas at the age of 61 and continued working into her nineties.
Barroso was a leading authority on the flora of Brazil, having published a three-volume Sistemática de Angiospermas do Brasil. Her work on the Araceae, Dioscoreaceae, Leguminosae, Myrtaceae and Scrophulariaceae was extensive, however she focused on the Compositae and more than half of the one hundred or so new species she described were in this family. Three genera have been named in her honour, Barrosoa and Grazielia>/i> in the Asteraceae and Grazielodendron of the Leguminosae. Barrosa received numerous awards and titles in Brazil and was one of only eight recipients of the Millennium Botany Award from the International Botanical Congress in 1999. The Herbarium 'Graziela Barroso' (TEPB) of the Federal University of Piauí is named in her honour.
