Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana was born in San Miguel Nepantla near Mexico City in 1648 or 1651. She lived a comfortable life with her mother and maternal grandparents and educated herself from her grandfather's library. In her teens, she continued her studies privately while she was lady-in-waiting at the colonial viceroy's court. She turned down marriage proposals and, when she was age 19, chose to become a nun so she could study as she wished and "have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study." 

Juana joined the order of St. Jerome (The Hieronymites), took the name Sor. Juana Inés de la Cruz (Sister Joan Agnes of the Cross) and remained cloistered in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite in Mexico City from 1669 until her death in April 1695. While in the convent, she studied and wrote religious and secular poetry and prose dealing with topics including love, feminism, and religion. And, her writing was published in Spain through the patronage of the Viceroy and Vicereine of New Spain. 

In 1690 the Bishop of Puebla wrote a letter saying she should focus on religious instead of secular studies and, as a woman, devote herself to prayer and give up her writing. In response, Sor. Juana wrote a letter defending a woman's right to formal education and advocating for a woman's right to serve as an intellectual authority through writing and publishing. The Archbishop of Mexico then wrote a letter condemning Sor Juana's "waywardness" and her challenge to the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church. 

By 1693, Sor. Juana stopped publishing, agreed to do penance and sold all her books. And, two years later, she died ministering to other nuns in the convent stricken during a plague, 

In 1989, the Mexican prose and poetry writer and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz revived interest in her writing as examples of feminist advocacy. And she appeared on a Mexico 1,000-peso then on a 200-peso banknote.