A mature and successful woman, Helena becomes involved with Edu, who is twenty years her junior. She battles prejudice in order to live her love, but their romance fizzles out when she realizes that her daughter Camila has also fallen in love with him. Her dilemma grows even worse when she discovers that the girl has leukemia. Helena must disclose the real identity of Camila‘s father in order to try and find a compatible bone marrow donor. In order to save her, she decides to give up her new love and have another baby with her daughter‘s father.

The soap opera follows the story of young Aurélia Camargo (Norma Blum), a girl who falls in love with the ambitious young journalist Fernando Seixas (Cláudio Marzo), who also falls in love with her, but rejects her when he receives an invitation to marry Adelaide (Fátima Freire), the daughter of Tavares do Amaral (Felipe Wagner), a wealthy banker. Feeling abandoned by her great love, Aurélia dreams of one day having him back. Until, when she turns 18, she is surprised with an inheritance from her grandfather, and becomes a very rich woman, allowing her to create her own rules for her life. However, for the society of the time, it was not good form for a woman to enjoy such independence. For this reason, Aurélia begins to rely on a distant relative, Dona Firmina Mascarenhas (Zilka Sallaberry), to act as her mother, and on the administrator Mr. Lemos (Alberto Perez), to guide her in business. So, she sees a great opportunity to have Fernando in her life again.