[2] In 1986, she joined the Guitar Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro, headed by guitarist Turíbio Santos as conductor.

In July 1998, she played Europe's most renowned summer festivals sharing the stage with such artists as Cassandra Wilson, Joe Cocker, Maria Joao and fellow Brazilians Chico Cesar, Marisa Monte, and Gilberto Gil.

Owing to a motor disability called Focal dystonia, she was unable to play between 1998 and 2001, but she made a complete recovery and released a collaborative album with her former partner Jeff Young in 2002 called Nowhere, and 3 Guitars the following year for the Chesky label with jazz guitarists Larry Coryell and John Abercrombie.

In the same year she was featured performer (actress/singer) in the opera-musical Opera das Pedras, in São Paulo, Brasil, directed by Denise Milan and Lee Breuer.

In November she released her first independent and authorial album Amor e Outras Manias Crônicas through her own label Quatro Ventos.

In 2013 Assad released Between Love and Luck in U.S. and her song "Pega no Coco" won the first prize as the Best World Music in the U.S. Songwriting Competition.

Jon Pareles of The New York Times said Assad "arrived with a headset microphone and an electric guitar (which could simulate acoustic-guitar tones) that had a drumstick under the strings, lifting them away from the frets.

The first sounds she played...were sliding pitches suggesting a koto; soon she was plucking and tapping ethereal chords on both sides of the drumstick and then cooing, in a voice like affectionate baby talk, about innocence and mysticism...She continued with Brazilian pop songs transformed by her imaginative virtuosity, moving from gauzy delicacy to vigorous propulsion, from dreaming to dancing and back."