Duarte Lima was born in Peso da Régua, northern Portugal. He was the fifth of nine children; their parents were Adérito Lima, an electric power company employee, and Maria de Jesus, a trader. Very inclined to music, he learnt to play the organ in the majestic setting of the cathedral of Miranda do Douro, where the family was then residing. With the death of his father due to cancer when Duarte Lima was only 11 years old, he was pressured to combine studies with work, since his mother, Maria de Jesus, was then left alone with their large offspring. He then begun a career in the real estate business of his uncle Júlio, thriving rapidly. In the meanwhile he left his mother's house to finish his high school studies in Liceu D. Pedro V at Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal. He was there when the Carnation Revolution took place in April 1974. After the revolution he became a member of the PSD, a political party, and enrolls in the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) in order to study law. In 1983 he became a member of the Portuguese Parliament, the Assembleia da República, for the first time. With the rise of Aníbal Cavaco Silva to the leadership of PSD, Duarte Lima becomes a noted personality of the party, reaching the capacity of parliamentary leader of PSD. He was awarded a degree in 1986 by the UCP. Even before graduation he married Alexina Lima de Deus and starts to invest in the stock exchange, from where he would reportedly earn a considerable amount of money. An increasingly well known personality in Portuguese politics, Duarte Lima was subjected to heavy media exposure in 1994 when the weekly newspaper O Independente, then directed by Paulo Portas, devoted a lot of headlines to Duarte Lima casting doubt on his alleged sudden enrichment. Calls for an investigation to the Attorney General's Office, did not find criminal evidence, but did not explain the source of such huge income in Duarte Lima's bank accounts.