Birth year unknown (estimated mid-1530s). Born as the daughter of the head of the Ii clan, a local lord of Iinoya in Totomi Province (present-day Kita-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka). The Ii were subjects of Imagawa Yoshimoto; her father Ii Naomori fought on the Imagawa side at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560 and was killed. Afterward, male heirs of the clan were eliminated one after another through assassination and battle, pushing the Ii to the brink of extinction. Naotora had taken Buddhist vows under the name 'Jiro Hoshi,' but with no male heir remaining, she assumed lordship of Iinoya as a woman and took the name 'Ii Naotora.' Enduring pressure from Imagawa Ujizane and Ono Michiyoshi (Tajima no Kami), she protected Iinoya and raised the orphaned Toramatsu (later Ii Naomasa). Naomasa went on to distinguish himself under Tokugawa Ieyasu and became one of the celebrated 'Four Generals of Tokugawa.' Naotora died on August 26, 1582. Naomasa founded the Hikone domain, and the Ii clan continued as a distinguished house producing Tairo (Great Elders) through the end of the Edo period. She gained nationwide fame as the protagonist of the 2017 NHK Taiga Drama 'Onna Joshu Naotora.'

A woman of indomitable spirit who sustained her clan when all male heirs had perished. She refused to yield to outside pressure and devoted her life to raising the next generation — Naomasa. She combined the learning of a Buddhist nun with the decisiveness of a ruling lord.

By raising Ii Naomasa, she laid the foundation for the Ii clan that would support the Tokugawa shogunate. Her story of protecting her house as a female lord in the male-dominated Sengoku era became widely known through the 2017 NHK Taiga Drama. She is also recognized as an important figure in recent scholarship on women of the Sengoku period.