Living in Brazil, she graduated from the Federal University of Paraná, where she taught Pharmacognosy in the Pharmacy and Biochemistry course.

As a tenured professor of the same subject and with a PhD in Biochemistry, she also began teaching in the recently founded postgraduate course in Botany.

Having retired from teaching, although without formal training in the arts, she took a course in Botanical Illustration at the Centro de Ilustração Botânica do Paraná to satisfy a long-held desire to paint flora. Her teachers were Diana Carneiro and Fátima Zagonel, and in 2000 she was accepted into the CIBP group of artists.