Deša Diana was born in Brist in 1932; her father was the well-known Croatian writer Srećko Diana. She attended high schools in Dubrovnik and Split, and took a degree in art history at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1957.
After graduating, in 1957-1963 she worked in the Architecture History Institute of the Town Planning Institute in Split, as translator, and in the Split Institute for the Conservation of Monuments, as art historian and conservator. She was particularly responsible for the Kaštela area.
From 1967 to 1998 she worked in Split Municipal Museum, which started working in 1945, as independent institution located in the heart of the old core, Diocletian’s Palae, in the Papalic Palace. Her first jobs covered putting in order the inventory books.
She was director of this museum for 17 full years, concentrating on the renovation of the museum and bringing the staff up to strength as well as ordering the documentation.
The number of inventory entries was doubled during her term. She founded the conservation workshop in the SCM. She successfully carried out the conservation of the silver objects from the holdings of the treasury of the Split cathedral, which she also did a specialised study of.
Thanks to her championship, the Vidović Gallery was founded, as component part of the Split Municipal Museum. She published a considerable number of specialised and scholarly works, and did a large number of thematic exhibitions. She has written a number of books, including a monograph Split Municipal Museum, 1997.
For her work, she was awarded the Order of the Croatian Daystar with Figure of Marko Marulić.

NB. Data taken from the questionnaire, material taken from the Personnel Archives of the MDC, and from an interview recorded on June 16, 2006.