Born in Argentina, Mary was one of three children of Molly and Peter Ingouville. She attended schools in Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland and France. She trained as a journalist and in 1959 went to work for weekly Times of Brazil. In 1958, she met South African Geoffrey Burton. The couple married in Brazil and moved to South Africa in 1961. She became a leading figure in the Black Sash, an anti-Apartheid organisation formed by white South African women to protest human rights violations. Burton served as the president of the Black Sash from 1986 to 1990. In 1995, she was appointed a Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and served on its Human Rights Committee. In 2000, she helped launch the Home for All Campaign, a campaign that called primarily on white South Africans to contribute to the reconciliation of South Africa in recognition of the benefits they had received from racial privilege under Apartheid. She has been awarded civic, provincial, and national honors, including the Order of Luthuli in Silver, and holds an honorary degree from the University of Cape Town.