She was born in Salgótarján on the Pécskő Roma hill. She was unable to attend school, as she looked after her nine younger siblings alongside her ailing mother. She had big dreams: she wanted to perform in a circus, train to be a ballerina, and she also deeply loved to draw, and even crafted clay sculptures. She learned to read and write in her adulthood from her husband and children; together with her husband, they raised four children. As an adult, she worked in a mine as a loader. In 1970, she was granted a disability pension due to heart disease, which was when she began to paint. Her first drawing, a depiction of the Virgin Mary, was created in 1972. Female portraits became her main theme. Initially, she would sketch the portraits first and then paint them with oil—not on canvas, but on fiberboard due to a lack of money. Her animal depictions were influenced by the works of Péter Földi, a painter from Somoskőújfalu. Painting brought her immense joy; her first solo exhibition was held in 1985 at the Museum of Naive Art in Kecskemét, where her paintings are still on display today as part of a permanent exhibition. In the final stage of her life, as her illness progressed, she only made pencil drawings, which she could color in more easily from her sickbed.