Suzanne Aubert (1835–1926) was a Lyonnaise Catholic nun renowned throughout New Zealand for her pioneering work with the Māori and for her synthesis of indigenous and European herbal medicines. Author of a Māori grammar as well as Māori prayer and phrasebooks, she established the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion in 1892—a Marian religious order formally recognised by Pope Benedict XV. Her botanical remedies became famous throughout New Zealand, and upon her death in 1926 she was mourned across the country. Her funeral was reported in the media as the most prominent ever accorded to a woman in New Zealand at that time.

Invited to Auckland in 1859 by Jean Baptiste Pompallier, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of New Zealand, she eschewed her expected role of teaching French to wealthy families upon her arrival and insisted upon helping the indigenous, the sick, and the disadvantaged. She initially worked at the Nazareth Institute for Māori Girls, a boarding school in Auckland, before relocating to Hawke’s Bay where, throughout the 1870s, she revitalised the Catholic Māori Mission.

In 1883, she was invited to Hiruharama-Jerusalem on the Whanganui River, where she founded the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, a Marian Religious Order, which later received the Decree of Praise from Pope Benedict XV. “Never forget that we were first instituted for the Māori, that we began in the bush, that by our vows we are concentrated to their service”, she remarked. “They have the first claim on our love, on our care. A Māori village was the cradle of our institute”.

In 1899, Mother Aubert arrived in Wellington in the company of three other sisters. They promptly set up a centre for the disadvantaged, a home for the disabled, a crèche for working parents, and a soup kitchen (which still exists to this day). These efforts formed the foundations of Our Lady’s Home of Compassion, which was opened in Island Bay after a massive fundraising effort. Later, Aubert developed the Home as a facility for training nurses and for providing free hospital care to the poor.

Upon her death in 1926, Aubert was buried in Karori cemetery in Wellington. Because the Sisters of Compassion already anticipated her beatification, they enclosed her body within a lead coffin inside a larger wooden coffin. In 1951, her remains were transferred to the Home of Compassion at Island Bay.