Armed with an implacable personality, Mouazzaz Rawda is recognised for her sculptural work, through which she demonstrated her appetite for freedom and found fulfilment both as a woman and as an artist. Born Mouazzaz Pertev to a wealthy Baghdadi family, she studied at the Istanbul Normal School as a young woman. In accordance with her privileged social background, she received music lessons, particularly oud, piano and violin, as well as sewing and painting classes. During a trip to Lebanon in 1926, she met Doctor Youssef Rawda, who became her husband.

After moving to Beirut, M. Rawda took a few classes at the studio of her painter friend Moustafa Farroukh (1901–1957), who encouraged her to pursue academic training. However, she would only fully dedicate herself to art from her late forties onwards. By then, she felt the urge to find new meaning to her life, to avoid sinking into the monotony of married life. In 1954 she enrolled in the School of Painting at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied for three years. Between 1957 and 1977, she took classes in several disciplines, such as painting, drawing, ceramics, design and sculpture under the tutorship of American artist Arthur Frick at the American University of Beirut. In the meantime, she spent a few months in Paris.

While she did produce a few paintings, such as Irises (1964), M. Rawda’s practice focused mainly on sculpture. Working with materials like wood, marble or stone, the artist quickly adopted the language of abstraction, playing on the empty and full spaces formed by the volumes of her models. She synthesised various elements, sometimes interlocking them like actual constructions, a prime example of which can be seen in Femme 1 (c.1960). Her works often referenced female bodies, in which the artist often found ground for experimentation, in that their supple lines harmonised well with the sturdiness of the materials used. She rejected any form of rigidity, as exemplified in the piece Refusal (1975), which shows her resolve to inject movement, rhythm and emotional strength into the subjects she depicted.

Working between her home in Aley and her studio in Beirut, M. Rawda gradually made a name for herself in Lebanese artistic and cultural circles. Between 1964 and 1968, she took part in the annual editions of the Autumn Salon at the Sursock Museum. M. Rawda succeeded in standing out in the mostly male-dominated sculptural field of the time thanks to her nonconformist and vibrant style, particularly when her works were featured in the public space, thus further raising her profile. In 1967, she won first prize at the monuments contest organised by the Ministry of Tourism with her stone sculpture Hayalissa (1964), which was exhibited at the entrance to the city of Saida. She also created the marble piece Dabke (1970) for the same city, which stands on Château de la Mer Square.

Although some of her works were destroyed in the bombing of her home in Aley during the civil war, M. Rawda leaves behind an innovative and poetic body of work that expresses the renewed energy of a woman who always envisioned herself as free. Her works are included in the collections of public institutions in Lebanon, such as the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Alita and the Beirut Museum of Art and in France, particularly at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, and in regional private collections, such as the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah.