Born in Podgorica on September 17, 1970, where she finished primary school and the gymnasium. She graduated in 1993 at the Faculty for Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Podgorica with average grade 9,96 of total 10. She has been awarded the December award of the city of Podgorica for the year 1991. and the Plaque of University of Montenegro for the year 1993. The master degree she received in July 1996 from the Mathematical Faculty University of Belgrade (with average mark 10), with master thesis “Characteristic classes of quaternionic vector bundles”. The period from February 1996 till July 1998 she spent at Moscow State University “M. V. Lomonosov”, Faculty for mechanics and mathematics, Chair for differential geometry and applications. In June 1998 she defended candidate dissertation “Real cohomology and characteristic Pontryagin classes of generalized symmetric spaces” supervised by Yu. P. Solovyov with average mark 5. Based on this, she was awarded in Russia Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics. In November 2008 the Mathematical Faculty of the University in Belgrade nostrified this diploma as diploma of doctor of mathematical sciences.

During the period July 2000 to August 2002 she held postdoc position at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich as the fellow of Deutsche Forschung Gemainschaft. For the achievements in science during 2001-2003 she was awarded the prize from Petar Vukčević fund of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts.

As fellow of the European mathematical society she participated at the IV and V European mathematical congress, in Stockholm, Sweden 2004 and Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2008, as well as at the International mathematical congress held in Hayderabad, India, 2010 as fellow of International mathematical union. In the framework of the program Oxford College’s Hospitality Scheme for Montenegro she was the visitor of St. John’s College of University of Oxford in January 2007. In April 2009, she was invited for a conference, while in October 2014 she spent three weeks within research in pairs program at the Mathematical Institute Oberwolfach, Germany. In September 2013 she visited University of Southampton as the recipient of London Mathematical Society Research grant.

Some of more important papers: S. Terzić, Cohomology with real coefficients of generalized symmetric spaces, (Russian), Fundamentalnaya i Prikladnaya Matematika, Vol. 7 (2001), no. 1, 131-157; S. Terzić, Rational homotopy groups of generalized symmetric spaces, Mathematische Zeitschrift, 243 (2003), 491-532; Svjetlana Terzić, Rational topology of gauge groups and of spaces of connections, Compositio Mathematicae, 141 (2005), no. 1, 262-270; Victor M. Buchstaber and Svjetlana Terzić, Equivariant complex structures on homogeneous spaces and their cobordism classes, Advances in Mathematical Sciences, Geometry, topology and mathematical physics, Translations 2, 224 (2008), 27-57, American Mathematical Society; D. Kotschick and S. Terzić, Chern numbers and the geometry of partial flag manifold, Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici, 84 (2009), no. 3, 587-616; Jelena Grbić and Svjetlana Terzić, The integral Pontrjagin homology of the based loop space on a flag manifold, Osaka Journal of Mathematics 47 (2010), no. 2, 439-460; Victor M. Buchstaber and Svjetlana Terzić, Toric genera of homogeneous spaces and their fibrations, International Mathematics Research Notices, 2013, 1324-1403.

As a plenary speaker she participated: at the Congress of Mathematicians of Serbia and Montenegro, Petrovac, 2004, International conference Toric topology and automorphic forms, Khabarovsk, Russia, 2011, Alexandroffs readings, Moscow State University „M. V. Lomonosov“, 2012; The second mathematical conference of the Republic of Srpska, Trebinje, 2012; Geometry and analysis of metric structures, Sobolev institute for mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, 2013; Topology of torus actions and applications to geometry, Satelite conference of ICM, Daejeon, South Korea, 2014.

She was leader of the bilateral project “Geometry and topology of manifolds” between Montenegro and Slovenia for 2012-2013 and one of the leaders of “International Project Geometry, Topology and Combinatorics of Manifolds and Dynamical Systems” (2005-2010), hosted by School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy. She is participating as foreign expert at the project 174020 of the Ministry for Sciences and Technology of Serbia for 2011-2015. Since 2006 she is one of vice-presidents of the Society of mathematicians and physicists of Montenegro. She served as a referee for numerous papers in international journals, such as Publications de l’Institute Mathematique, SANU, Contemporary Mathematics, American Mathematical Society, Proceedings of the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mathematische Zeitschrift.

Since October 1993 she is employed with the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Podgorica, first as a teaching assistant, since May 1997 as an assistant, since December 1999 as assistant professor and since January 2005 as an associate professor. She has been promoted to full professor in March 2010, for the courses Introduction into Geometry, Algebraic topology and Introduction into differential geometry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics of the University of Montenegro. She supervised two master thesis, defended in 2007 and 2009 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and co-supervised doctoral thesis defended in 2012 at the University Nica Sophia Antipolis, France. In the period 2005-2007 she served as a vice-dean for science and international relations at the Faculty for Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Podgorica.

On 29 November 2011, she has been elected for an associate member of Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts.