Flora de Oliveira Lima

Flora de Oliveira Lima (née Cavalcanti de Albuquerque; 1863 – 1940) was a Brazilian socialite, diplomat's wife and daughter of a wealthy planter. She spent her life following her husband's diplomatic appointments and collecting books. Upon her husband's death in 1928, she became the assistant librarian of the Oliveira Lima Library (sometimes referred to as the Ibero American Library) at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. In 1930, she became the Brazilian designee of the Inter-American Commission of Women.

Biography Flora Cavalcanti de Albuquerque was born in 1863 in at the Cachoeirinha sugar mill, located in Vitória de Santo Antão, Pernambuco Brazil to aristocratic mill owners who owned a sugar plantation in the state. On her mother's side, she descended from , first Viscount of Utinga. As a daughter of the aristocracy, she was educated at home, studying English and French and being trained as the wife of a public official, who would have social duties to help construct and mold the national identity. At the age of 28, in 1891, she married Oliveira Lima giving the trader's son, social status, She helped him amass a collection of 45,000 books and served as his archivist, organizer and photographer. During the 1930s, she also organized and edited Manoel's memoirs with Gilberto Freyre, with whom the childless couple had developed a mentoring relationship.

De Oliveira Lima served on the library staff until her death in 1940 in Washington, DC.