From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmake a virtue of necessitymake a virtue of necessityADVANTAGEto get an advantage from doing something that you have to do, or to pretend that you are doing it willingly → virtue
Examples from the Corpus
make a virtue of necessity• But Simon does not merely make a virtue of necessity.• But since response from ministers by the 1840s was extremely circumspect the reformers were probably making a virtue of necessity. 