Eugenia Greceanu was born as Eugenia Popescu in Bucharest in 1928. Her mother came from a Greek merchants’ family, and her father was a Romanian officer. As a schoolgirl, Greceanu was passionate about literature and languages, but subsequently, under the influence of her relative, architect Adrian Gheorghiu, decided to study architecture at the Ion Mincu Institute of Architecture, where she was a student between 1947 and 1952.

Upon graduation, she worked in the office of Gheorghiu and Henri H. Stahl. She participated in the work on systematization at ICSOR (Central Institute for the Systematization of Cities and Regions). At Gheorghiu’s office, she met historian Radu Scarlat Greceanu, whom she married in 1953. The marriage sparkled her interest in architectural history.

In 1954, Greceanu began working on historic preservation projects within the Historical Monuments section of ICSOR-ISCAS (Institute for Studies and Design for Construction, Architecture and Systematization), which was led by architects Ștefan Balș and Radu Udroiu. In this role, she was responsible for multiple historic preservation projects, including those of churches and monasteries. Furthermore, Eugenia Greceanu conducted her own research on Romania’s architectural heritage. Simultaneously, Greceanu was a project manager for urban systematization, working on residential districts in the lower Danube area between 1952 and 1959.

In 1960, Greceanu moved to the Directorate of Historic Monuments, where she became responsible for the regions of Brasov, Mures and Hunedoara. In this role, she identified and listed architectural monuments, participating, between 1961 and 1970, in the revision of the List of Historic Monuments of Romania, prepared by the Directorate. At this time, she also wrote her doctoral dissertation, devoted to church architecture in Transylvania between the 13th and the 17th centuries (completed in 1974, it was defended in 1977). Subsequently, she moved to the planning team of the Directorate of National Cultural Heritage.

In 1977, the Greceanu moved to the Historical Museum of the Romanian Socialist Republic, where she focused on research. There, she published on medieval buildings and sites in Pitesti and Botoșani. However, at this time she also worked on the adaptive reuse project of the fortress of Brasov, which was converted into a restaurant and a hotel. Greceanu retired from the museum in 1983, becoming a professor at the Ion Mincu Architectural Institute in 1993. Between 1993 and 2000, she was the president of the Romanian committee of ICOMOS. 

Greceanu lived in Bucharest until her passing in 2016.