Mirella Vescovi was born in Milan in 1935. She started hiking and climbing at a very young age. In 1961, she married Luciano Tenderini and left a post as a civil servant at the European Community in Brussels to manage refuges with him in various places in the Alps. In 1974 Mirella Tenderini began dealing with art books at Electa and other publishers and in 1982 she founded an international literary agency for art and photographic books.