This article discusses the cultural, editorial and business activities carried out by the writer Faustina Sáez de Melgar. The study of as yet unpublished documents from her personal archive enables a renewed approach to her figure and her professional work, revealing her true dimension as a woman, writer, journalist, entrepreneur and cultural activist that far exceeds her traditional and reductionist classification as a typical mid-nineteenth-century woman writer. The clarification of important personal and professional data shows her as an independent enterprising woman who, in parallel to her literary work, assumed, throughout her life, challenges in traditionally masculine fields, new for a woman of her time.En este artículo se aborda el estudio de la actividad cultural, editorial y empresarial realizada por la escritora Faustina Sáez de Melgar. Documentos inéditos de su archivo personal permiten un renovador acercamiento a su figura y a su labor profesional, desvelando su verdadera dimensión como mujer, escritora, periodista, empresaria y activista cultural que supera con creces su tradicional y reductora clasificación como escritora isabelina. La aclaración de relevantes datos personales y profesionales desvelan a una mujer emprendedora y con iniciativa propia que, paralelamente a su labor literaria, asumirá, a lo largo de toda su vida, novedosos retos en campos tradicionalmente masculinos.