Malak Hefni Nassef was born on December 1886 and died on October 1918 at the age of 32 years old. She was ranked as the second prominent feminist figure in Egyptian literature after Aisha Taymour who died in 1912. She wrote and published a long elegy in the Egyptian press. Nassef graduated in 1903 and was awarded a diploma of Pedagogy. Although she is from the middle class, she decided to work as a teacher and rejected the idea stating that work is confined to feminists from poor families seeking only their daily bread.

 

  She continued in this career till her marriage to "Abdel Nasser Beck El Bassel", one of the elites of Fayoum where she settled till her death in 1918, and where she perfected lyric and prosaic writing styles stemming from the influence of the Bedouin and desert lire. Hence, she is entitled the "Scholar of the Desert" to mark her works published by the press, particularly "AI-Garida".

 

  She focused in her literary and press works on Egyptian women conditions before and after marriage as she considered that society uprightness and eradication of its problems could be realized only through elimination of outmoded customs and traditions as well as defects of both sexes. This does not deny the necessity of following the instructions of Islamic religion without any intransigence or exaggeration. She published "Feminist Issues", which addressed issues that were related to women and hot to resolve them.

 

  Nassef addressed women's issues in the first years of the twentieth century advocating that women's work is a necessity providing that it goes in harmony with her conjugal duty; she accordingly gave the striking example of Egyptian female peasants working in their parents' farms.