When she was five, the family moved to New York City where she attended public schools and then graduated from the Pratt Institute, in preparation for a career in industrial textile design.
[1] In 1938, after working for design firms, she enrolled in the art history program at the University of Chicago and graduated with her Bachelor's degree in 1939, a Master's in 1941 and her PhD in 1948.
[1][3] Under her direction, the Art Index became a primary resource for scholars of medieval studies and Green was said to have built a close rapport with her contributors.
[4] The two co-authored a volume in the Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology in 1961, and edited and translated a paper about Saint Bonaventure, which was published as Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century.
[1] The Princeton Byzantine scholar Kurt Weitzmann gave Rosalie Green full credit for the international reputation that the Index had earned.