Rose was the first canonized saint of the Americas, and was born in Lima, Peru on April 20, 1548. Through she was named Isabel de Flores, a maid commented on her beauty and said that she was "como una rosa," or "like a rose." She became known as "Rose."

Rose was known for her beauty, and people often commented on her loveliness. Early in her life, Rose developed a devotion to St. Catherine of Siena and was fascinated by the saint's mystical experiences and perhaps more so by the stigmata which Catherine received. Rose subjected herself to extreme fasting and self-inflicted pain to identify with the suffering of the world and show her devotion to God.

Rose tried to avoid the attention she received for her beauty, but her parents often displayed her in the community. Rose did not wish to be desired. One day her mother placed a wreath of flowers on Rose's head to show her off to visitors, and Rose promptly drove a pin through the wreath and so deeply into her head that she later had great difficulty removing it.

Though her parents had reared her for marriage, Rose refused because she had vowed herself to God. She would often rub her face with pepper to induce blistering and redness in order to make suitors believe that her skin was always in such a condition.

Rose desired to enter a cloister, but her parents would not allow her to do so. She worked hard instead to support her poor parents, and still refusing to marry, took a vow of perpetual virginity and became a third order Dominican. She made herself a hermitage in the yard of their home and slept there on a pile of broken tiles. Rose also constructed for herself a crown of thorns which looked like a wreath of flowers on the outside, but was full of silver thorns that dug into her scalp on the inside.

Rose reportedly entered into ecstatic moods when she spoke of God or received the Eucharist. She also set up a room in her parents' house to care for the sick and poor of the community.

In Rose's last painful sickness before her death, it is reported that she prayed, "Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Your love in my heart." Rose died on August 24, 1617.

Rose was beatified by Clement IX in 1668 and canonized by Pope Clement X on April 12, 1671.