Margaret Mee is remembered for her minutely detailed paintings of flowers fom Brazilian forests. Her collection of Amazon flower paintings resides at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, near London. Another large collection is kept by the Instituto de Botânica in São Paulo Brasil while many others are with individual and institutions worldwide.

Margaret was born in England and trained as an artist in London. She moved to Brazil in 1952 and spent thirty six years of her life there with Greville Mee and although they were not married she used his name. Eventually they married in secret in London in 1984. Margaret died in a car [automobile] accident in the county of Leicestershire England in 1988.

In the early years of her life she was an commited activist for the Communist Party in London and though some of her political views mellowed later she was never afraid of calling for the conservation of the natural world, the Amazon forests and their wealth of animals and plants in particular.

Tony Morrison first encountered Margaret's remarkable story in 1970 soon after she had settled in Rio de Janeiro. See more in The Face behind the Flowers. Some years later and with Margaret's support Tony created a theme designed for television and a book - published less than a month before she died - In Search Of Flowers of the Amazon Forests - Nonesuch Expeditions, 1988 . The generic title for the project was Margaret Mee's Amazon.