Short answers, pulled from the story.
The she-wolf, called lupa in Latin, is the wolf in Rome's foundation myth that nursed and sheltered the twins Romulus and Remus after King Amulius of Alba Longa ordered them abandoned in the wild. She cared for them in her den, a cave called the Lupercal, until a shepherd named Faustulus found them.
A shepherd named Faustulus discovered the twins at the Lupercal, the cave where the she-wolf had sheltered them. Romulus went on to found Rome and become its first king.
The Capitoline Wolf may be either Etruscan or Old Latin in origin, but a discovery made during its restoration in the year 2000, combined with radiocarbon dating, has cast doubt on any ancient date for it. It is housed today in Rome's Capitoline Museum.
Mussolini's Fascist government used the she-wolf to promote the idea of a thriving 'New Rome' and Roman imperial power. It created a youth organization called Figli della Lupa, or Sons of the She-Wolf, for children aged six to eight, featured the she-wolf at the 1937 Mostra Augustea della Romanità, and changed Italy's coinage and stamps to depict her.
Mussolini gave bronze copies of the Capitoline Wolf to Cincinnati, Ohio; Rome, Georgia; Chiyoda in Tokyo, Japan; and Timisoara, Romania.
In the three canonical literary versions of the myth, by Livy, Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the word lupa is also noted as slang for a prostitute, not just a she-wolf.