She spent her childhood in many different countries, and attended boarding school in the United Kingdom, later studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
[2] After working as an actress in the United Kingdom, Nomvete moved to Johannesburg, South Africa in 1994, after the election of Nelson Mandela as president and the formal end of apartheid.
In the 1990s, Nomvete embarked on a television career, achieving fame in the South African soap opera Generations.
Her character Ntsiki Lukhele was "TV's ultimate super-bitch: power-hungry, manipulative and deadly".
[3] In Zulu Love Letter (2004), Nomvete played Thandi, a single mother and journalist struggling to communicate with her estranged thirteen-year-old daughter.