She is of Portuguese and Canarian (Spanish) descent from her father's side. Her paternal grandfather Isidoro Gracia y García was a Spaniard, from Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.
She is of Dutch-Jewish, Curaçao and Taíno descent from her mother's side. Maria's maternal great-grandfather, writer Federico Henríquez y Carvajal was the son of Noel Henríquez Altías, a Dutch Sephardic Jew from Curaçao, and Clotilde Carvajal Fernández, a woman of Taíno descent.