Born in Sofia (Bulgaria), Vera Nikolova studied music in Italy, where she won her first prizes in piano and singing at the National Music Conservatory of Venice. She studied at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Giorgio Favaretto, in Milan with Rodolfo Celletti, and continued with Tito Gobbi and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. In Paris, where she leaves now, she has worked with Gerard Souzay and Regine Crespin.

She began her career with Juditha, in Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans (Vicenza’s Teatro Olimpico), Dido, in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (in Vicenza, then at the Teatro Nuovo in Verona). She went on to sing the greatest baroque oratorios in Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the UK. At the festival of Saint-Riquier, she performed Rossini's Petite messe solennelle, on her European tour and at the Flanders Festival Verdi's Requiem, in Antwerp Dvorak's Stabat Mater, in Paris Prokofiev's cantata Alexander Newsky.

At the Salle Gaveau in Paris and regarding opera, on the lyrical stages of Italy and Bulgaria, showing a "flawless musicality and rare vocal technique" (Musical Horizons, Sofia, June 2006), she performed the roles of Mozart (Giuditta, Cherubino, Dorabella, Marcellina) and Rossini (Rosine, Cenerentola, Isabella), with her repertory extending to the great mezzo-soprano roles as well (Charlotte, Carmen, Dalila, Santuzza, Azucena, the Princess of Bouillon, Sieglinde) etc.

Vera Nikolova has also concentrated on chamber music: in the United States, with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra of Seattle under Ralf Gothoni and Lorin Hollander, in Los Angeles, in Canada (McGill University in Montreal notably), where critics hailed her sensitivity and perfect vocal mastery ("she shows us the artistic summits of the great composers and takes us there...", Le Forum, Montreal, September 2006); and in Bulgaria, at the National Opera, the Bulgaria Concert Hall and Composers' Hall in Sofia, her native city, where a demanding audience recognizes in her a great interpreter of Russian, French and Bulgarian music.