Her varied educational career – music at the National Conservatory, biology at the University of the Azores, hotel management at the Universidade Internacional de Lisboa – led eventually to a degree in design, as a result of completing the course in design architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa.

She started working as a designer in 1992, when she founded the Elementos Combinados design studio. She has since designed, developed and produced several lines of furniture. From 1997 onwards she has been involved in several inter-disciplinary design projects exploring the relationship with music and writing. She is an occasional contributor on the subject to a number of Portuguese and foreign journals.

Founder of Experimenta – Associação para a Promoção do Design e Cultura de Projecto, created in 1998. Since 1999 she has been engaged in managing and programming the experimentadesign biennale.