Josefina Menéndez Behety was born in Buenos Aires in 1874, the eldest daughter of José Menéndez and María Behety, and grew up in Punta Arenas as her father's business grew. In 1895 she married Mauricio Braun. The marriage joined the two rival clans of the wool boom, and in 1908 their trading houses merged into the most powerful firm in the far south of the continent.
Between 1903 and 1906 the couple built their mansion just off Plaza Muñoz Gamero, filled with the best furnishings France could send. They lived there with their ten children from 1906 to 1918, the years Punta Arenas calls its golden age. In the main bedroom she had a corner where she wrote and talked with her daughters. All that luxury came from sheep, raised on land taken from the Selk'nam.
The museum's catalogue says she was known for her many charitable works, and that for her golden wedding anniversary she had a church built in Buenos Aires. Her portrait, painted by the Spanish artist Julio Romero de Torres, belongs to the Museo Regional de Magallanes, housed in the very home her descendants gave to the state.
