New York born painter and printmaker, Rita Leff studied under Louis Schanker, Abraham Rattner and Adja Yunkers at the Art Students League, New York, the Brooklyn Museum School of Art and at Parsons School of Design. She began to exhibit her art in 1950 with the Brooklyn Society of Artists. Later she exhibited with the Audubon Artists (1955-58), the Boston Printmakers (1954), the Society of American Graphic Arts (1954), the Village Art Center and the National Association of Women Artists.

After 1971 Rita Leff  lived and worked in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she died in 1979. 

She was a full member of the Audubon Artists, the National Association of Women Artists and the Society of American Graphic Artists. Her original prints and paintings are included in the collections of such major institutions as the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, the University of Maine, Pennsylvania State University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.