Born in 1944 in Lisbon, Maria João Pires gave her first public performance at the age of 4 and began her studies of music and piano with Campos Coelho and Francine Benoît, continuing later in Germany with Rosl Schmid and Karl Engel. Alongside her concert career, she recorded for Erato for fifteen years and for Deutsche Grammophon for twenty years.

​Since the 1970s, she has focused on connecting art with life, community and education, exploring ways of realising this vision within society. She has explored approaches that respect the development of individuals and cultures while encouraging the exchange of ideas.

In 1999, she created the Belgais Centre for the Study of the Arts in Portugal. Maria João Pires regularly offers interdisciplinary workshops for professional musicians and music lovers. Concerts and recordings regularly take place in the Belgais concert hall. These activities are planned to be shared in the future with an international digital community, both paid and free of charge.

In 2012, in Belgium, she initiated two complementary projects; the Partitura Choirs, which create and develop choirs for children from disadvantaged backgrounds (including, in Belgium, the Hesperos Choir), and the Partitura Workshops. All Partitura projects aim to create an altruistic dynamic between artists of different generations, proposing an alternative to a world focused on competition. This philosophy continues to spread internationally through Partitura projects and workshops.