Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo was born in Paris to a Venezuelan diplomatic family, though she was raised on her family's hacienda near Caracas.
Teresa de la Parra, born Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo, came into the world on October 5, 1889, in Paris, France, where her father, Rafael Parra, was serving in a diplomatic post for the Venezuelan government. Though born on European soil, her identity would be deeply rooted in Venezuela, as her family soon returned to the family's sugar hacienda, 'El Tazón,' near Caracas, where she spent her early childhood.
This transatlantic origin—a Venezuelan of aristocratic Creole descent born in the cultural capital of Europe—would become emblematic of her literary life. She was shaped by two worlds: the traditional plantation society of Venezuela's landed elite, with its rigid social codes and Catholic conservatism, and later the cosmopolitan intellectual circles of Paris, where she would eventually settle as an adult and write her most celebrated novels.
Her birth into a prominent, wealthy family provided her with the education and social standing that allowed her later, unusual-for-the-time pursuit of a literary career as a woman. This dual heritage of Venezuelan hacienda culture and European sophistication became the thematic core of her writing, especially in her semi-autobiographical novel Ifigenia, which dissected the constraints placed on women of her class and era.