She graduated from the Realreform Gymnasium Luithlen in 1930 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1935 with a dissertation about glyptic art of the Old Akkadian period.

In 1938 she emigrated to the United States where she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the seals of Ashurnasirpal II.

She taught at Queens College and, beginning in 1958, at Columbia, attaining the rank of full professor in 1964.

[5] Columbia University established an Edith Porada professorship of ancient Near Eastern art history and archaeology with a $1 million endowment in 1983.

In 1989 Porada was awarded Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters for Columbia for "profound connections between the human experience and the interpretation of the cylinder seals."