Zita Maria Vaz Mendes is graduated in Chemical Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1971 and holds a BSc degree from the Faculty of Pharmacy (University of Lisbon).

Zita worked as a Chemist at Atral-Cipan (1971 to 1974) and afterwards (1985 to 2015) as a Research Chemist at Hovione Farmaciência SA.

During her career she worked in different pharmaceutical areas developing synthetic routes of various families of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API´s) such as tetracyclines, erythromycines derivatives, corticosteroids and anticholinergic, among others. As a result, Zita is the author or coauthor of 16 Worldwide Patents.

In 2015 she retired but continued to work as a Consultant at Hovione until 2018.