Mathilde Bensaude was born Mathilde Simone Rachel Pauline Bensaude in 1890 in Portugal. Her father was the wealthy and prominent engineer Alfredo Bensaude, who founded Portugal's Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon. Her mother, Jane Oulman Bensaude was a French author of children's books. Mathilde Bensaude was an internationally known mycologist and plant pathologist who’s pioneering doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne first showed heterothallism in the Basidiomycetes.