The wife of King Baudouin I of the Belgians (1930-1993), Doña Fabiola Fernanda María de las Victorias Antonia Adelaida de Mora y Aragón was born at Madrid, Spain on June 11, 1928, the third daughter of Don Gonzalo Mora Fernández Riera del Olmo, Marquis of Casa Riera, Count of Mora (1887-1957), and his wife, Doña Blanca de Aragon y Carrillo de Albornoz Barroeta-Aldamar y Elio (1892-).

She was the sister of Jaime de Mora y Aragón, a Spanish actor and playboy.

She married King Baudouin in Laeken, Belgium, on December 15, 1960; at the ceremony she wore a 1926 Art Deco tiara that had been a gift of the Belgian Empire to her husband's mother, Princess Astrid of Sweden, upon her marriage to King Leopold III of the Belgians. Fabiola and Baudouin had no children.

The queen is a former nurse, a writer of children's stories, and a prominent supporter of social causes around the world. Guido Derom, an explorer, named a newly discovered range of Antarctic mountains in her honor in 1961.