Biography

Maria de Jesus Simões Barroso Soares, GCL (2 May 1925 – 7 July 2015) was a Portuguese politician and actress, wife of President of Portugal Mario Soares and First Lady of Portugal between 1986 and 1996. Barroso was the daughter of military Alfredo José Barroso from Alvor, in Algarve, and Maria da Encarnação Simões, from Fuseta, Olhão, also in the Portuguese region of Algarve.

While at university, she performed in the National Theatre for four years but was later removed as a result of her political positions as member of the Democratic Opposition to the regime of Antonio Salazar. Even though qualified to do so, during the regimes of Salazar and Marcelo Caetano, she was forbidden to teach, even in private schools.

Maria Barroso married her university colleague Mario Soares in 1949 at the 3rd Conservatory of the Civil Register of Lisbon, while he was in the Aljube prison. They had one son, politician João Soares, born 1949, and a daughter, Isabel Barroso Soares, born 1951, who manages the Colégio Moderno in Lisbon.Although not as politically involved as her husband, Maria Barroso was a founding member of the Socialist Party in Bad Münstereifel, Germany in 1973. She was the President of the Aristides Sousa Mendes Foundation, the Pro Dignitate Association and the head of the Portuguese Red Cross for several years.

Maria Barroso had a degree in Historical and Philosophical Sciences from the Faculty of Arts, Lisbon and the course of Dramatic Arts from the National Conservatory. She was a member of the Portuguese National Theater Company and one of the most famous theater and cinema actresses in Portugal. In April 2000 she read the poetry of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen at the United Nations in New York in homage to Aristides Sousa Mendes. She was involved in activities aimed at supporting the areas of culture, education and family, childhood, social solidarity, female dimension, health, the integration of the disabled and the prevention of violence.