At the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain de Vries obtaining a Degree in Art History.

[2] De Vries gained a Diploma in Renaissance Studies from Instituto Lorenzo di Medici in Florence in 1995.

She edited The Australian Connoisseur and Collector magazine and has contributed to a number of journals related to art history.

In 1992, de Vries resigned as a Commonwealth Valuer of Painting because of concerns with being sued for property devaluation after identifying art forgeries.

As an adopted child out of Ireland, she went there to find her own story as well as that of Daisy Bates, an Irish amateur archaeologist in central Australia.

She discovered her biological mother was a teacher in an Irish National School and her father a Reuters journalist and a writer who died reporting the Spanish Civil War.

In June 2015, de Vries hosted a ceremony at the Shrine of Remembrance in Brisbane to honour ANZAC nurses.

In 1995, the Winston Churchill Fellowship was awarded de Vries to study Renaissance art in Italy.

She was also received the Sligo Non-Fiction prize and the Alice Award from the Society of Australian Women Authors in Sydney in 2012.

[8] Because her work covers some topics not extensively written about, the publishing of first editions can flush out people with more knowledge to contribute to revisions.