[1] She enrolled at the Escola Secundária Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho in 1928 and graduated in 1941 in Biological Sciences from the University of Lisbon.

In June of the same year, attending a Congress of Natural Sciences in Lisbon, she met Abilio Fernandes, who was soon to be her husband.

Rosette proceeded to reorganise and update the classification of herbarium material and published an index of seeds of the Botanical Garden.

Between 1944 and 1991, she attended 41 international congresses, held in Spain, France, UK, Sweden and Portugal, while between 1945 and 2000, she published some 250 papers, mainly in the field of plant systematics, but also in karyology, ethnobotany and the history of botany.

She contributed to Flora Europaea, particularly noteworthy papers published in Volumes II (1968), III (1972) and IV (1976), covering the systematic study of 11 genera belonging to the Boraginaceae, Compositae, Labiatae, Malvaceae and Scrophulariaceae.