Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis was born in Tehran, obtained an M.A. in Near Eastern Archaeology and Ancient Iranian Languages at the University of Göttingen in Germany and a PhD from University College London on Parthian art. She was Joint Editor of the Journal IRAN (1983-2003), Secretary of BIPS (1998-2003), President of the British Institute of Persian Studies (2006-2011) and Secretary of the Royal Numismatic Society (2005-2010). She is a member of the Academic Committee of the Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF).  She is Vice-President of the British Institute of Persian Studies.

She was appointed Curator of Middle Eastern Coins in the Department of Coins and Medals, The British Museum in 2005. She has successfully completed a joint collaborative project with the National Museum of Iran on Sasanian Coins of AD 224-651, which resulted in two volumes co-authored with Mrs Elahé Askari, the former Head of the Coins and Seals Department of the National Museum of Iran in Tehran, and Elizabeth Pendleton of the British Museum. Together with Dr Michael Alram, Vice-President of the Austrian Academy in Vienna, she is the Joint Director of the International Parthian Coin Project, The Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum (SNP). This is a collaborative research project involving major international museums with important Parthian coin holdings, such as Tehran, Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna and New York. SNP Volume 2: Mithradates II was published by the Austrian Academy Press in October 2020. She is now working on SNP Volume 4: Mithradates III – Orodes II.

She has published extensively on ancient Persian coins, art and culture and is particularly interested in religious and royal iconography. She has curated a series of small exhibitions at the British Museum and also contributed to the British Museum’s Cyrus Cylinder exhibition in Tehran, Houston and Mumbai.