We met her in All Our Yesterdays. She was an innocent citizen of planet Sarpeidon who was banished to a miserable place in that planet's past after two of her family members conspired to kill planetary leader Zor Khan.
Zarabeth was sent 5,000 years into her planet's past, into a barren ice age, where she lived in total isolation.
Her loneliness was broken only briefly when Spock and McCoy were accidentally sent into Sarpeidon's past by the atavachron, before returning to their present.
While there, Spock became emotionally involved with Zarabeth, who loved him, too. It was made explicit in this episode that Spock was not his usual self as this "romance" transpired. Dr. McCoy noticed that Spock was behaving irrationally, and he surmised that Spock had somehow regressed, biologicaly and socially, as a result of their abrupt time-travel transport on this weird world.
At the climax of the episode, it was revealed that Spock couldn't stay with Zarabeth unless McCoy stayed too. Spock was forced to choose between a life with McCoy and Zarabeth, and a life with McCoy and Kirk. He made what we must assume was the logical choice, and Zarabeth lived out the rest of her sad life alone.
In any case, she saved McCoy and Spock from certain doom, and she was a courageous innocent woman who bore her cruel fate with uncommon grace. She was a scrappy and resourceful survivor. Plus, she was the closest thing to a normal heterosexual girlfriend that Spock ever had. That makes her a heroine, and, in fact, a romantic heroine of great significance.
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