Early Life
Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões Ferreira was born to Portuguese parents in Mozambique, at the time a colony of the Portuguese Empire. Her father was José Simões Ferreira Júnior (1910–1989; born in Albergaria-a-Velha, and died in Porto, Portugal), and her mother was Irene Thierstein (1912–1997), born a Portuguese and British national in Lourenço Marques. Irene was of Swiss-German, Italian, and French descent. She was the daughter of Alberto Thierstein, a British national from Valletta, Malta (at the time a British-ruled territory), and Maria Burló, born in Alexandria, Egypt, who both migrated to Portuguese East Africa.
Heinz grew up in Portuguese East Africa's capital, Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). Her father was a physician and often brought her on calls into the African bush.
In 1960, Heinz earned a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1963, she graduated from the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Geneva and moved to the United States to be an interpreter at the United Nations.
She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and her native Portuguese.
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