Gracia Nassì was born in Lisbon in 1510, baptised with the name of Beatrice De Luna. The family belonged to the group of new Christians, who became such due to the baptisms imposed by the Portuguese rulers in 1497. Secretly educated in Judaism, at the age of 18 she married her maternal uncle Francisco Benveniste-Mendes, also a Marrano, who almost had a monopoly on the trade of spices produced by the Portuguese Empire. In 1537, after being widowed very young and with a daughter, Beatrice decided to move with all her entourage and assets to Antwerp to her other uncle and brother-in-law Diogo Mendes, also due to the introduction of the court of the Inquisition in Portugal.

In Antwerp, Beatrice actively participated in the management of family activities: thanks to her relationships and the coverage of commercial activities, the Mendes family were part of the aid network for the expatriation of the Marranos and their assets. Such was her ability that Diogo, before his sudden death in 1543, appointed her among the executors of his will, "as long as Beatrice di Luna is principal" (Leoni 2011, pp. 358-359), and entrusted her with the protection of his daughter, his universal heir.

After Diogo's death, Beatrice set out again, first reaching Venice and then, at the end of 1548, the nearby and welcoming Ferrara.

Thanks to the Este tolerance policy, she could abandon the Christian façade and the name of a convert, returning to being Donna Gracia Nassì. Her stay in Ferrara was short (1548-1551) but she left an indelible mark. To continue managing the great banking and commercial enterprise of the Mendes family, she asked Ercole II to be exempted from the limits that the city statutes imposed on the autonomy of women from Ferrara. The Duke accepted the request, justifying "his resolution with Beatrice's exceptional moral and intellectual skills" (Leoni 2011, p. 360).

Gracia Nassì was therefore the only woman in 16^th century Ferrara who could enjoy broad decision-making autonomy and the power to manage her own banking and commercial empire. An important protagonist of the cultural life of the increasingly numerous Sephardic community of Ferrara, active above all in helping the escape of the persecuted Marranos from Portugal. It was mainly thanks to her that Ferrara became the centre of Marrano publishing production and between 1552 and 1553 two fundamental works were dedicated to her: the "Biblia en lengua española", the first translated from Hebrew, by the printer Avraham Usque and the "Consolation of the Tribulations of Israel", written in Portuguese by Samuel Usque.

After a brief return to Venice, in 1552 Gracia Nassì moved permanently to Istanbul, where she was known simply as ‘ la Señora ’. Here she founded a rabbinical academy and dedicated herself to the assistance of the poor, always continuing to manage family affairs and also remaining politically active in aid of her co-religionists in Christian Europe: when Pope Paul IV condemned to the stake in Ancona twenty-six converts accused of continuing to profess Judaism, Gracia organised together with the Marrano community of Istanbul the boycott of the port of the Papal State, attempting to transfer the traffic to Pesaro, in the Duchy of Urbino, and had Sultan Suleiman I intervene to try to block the executions.

Gracia died in 1569 in Istanbul, a city where a synagogue dedicated to her entitled La Señora was active until 1890.