Jovanka Jeftanović was born on January 7th, 1912 in Belgrade, as daugther of arespectable merchant family from Sarajevo. She graduated in architecture from the Technical Faculty Belgrade in 1937. After graduating, Jeftanović worked at the office of the engineers Đorđe Lazarević and Vladeta Maksimović until 1941, when the Second World War abruptly interrupted her career. After the end of the war, Jeftanović devoted herself to urban planning, in order to help rebuilding destroyed cities in Yugoslavia. After the war she got a job at the Urban Planning Institute of Serbia (urbanistički zavod) as chief designer (glavni projektant) and worked on a large number of plans for the cities of Kragujevac, Kruševac, Loznica, Krupanj, Aranđelovac, Zlatibor and others. In 1955, together with the architects Mitrović and Tomić, Jeftanović founded the design office “Projektbiro” based in the „Dom beogradskih arhitekata” (House of Belgrade Architects) where they designed residential and public buildings.

Jeftanović worked at the Urban Planning Institute of Serbia and “Projektbiro” until she retiered in 1968. Jovanka Jeftanović died in 1994 at the age of 82 in Belgrade.