  We study the cosmological evolution of the universe when quintessence is
modeled within supergravity, supersymmetry is broken in a hidden sector, and we
also include observable matter in a third independent sector. We find that the
presence of hidden sector supersymmetry breaking leads to modifications of the
quintessence potential. We focus on the coupling of the SUGRA quintessence
model to the MSSM and investigate two possibilities. First one can preserve the
form of the SUGRA potential provided the hidden sector dynamics is tuned. The
currently available limits on the violations of the equivalence principle imply
a universal bound on the vacuum expectation value of the quintessence field
now, \kappa ^{1/2}Q\ll 1. On the other hand, the hidden sector fields may be
stabilised leading to a minimum of the quintessence potential where the
quintessence field acquires a mass of the order of the gravitino mass, large
enough to circumvent possible gravitational problems. However, the cosmological
evolution of the quintessence field is affected by the presence of the minimum
of the potential. The quintessence field settles down at the bottom of the
potential very early in the history of the universe. Both at the background and
the perturbation levels, the subsequent effect of the quintessence field is
undistinguishable from a pure cosmological constant
