Maria Bîldea was born in Bucharest and started studying to play the harp at the Georges Enesco Music Lycée when she was eight. At the age of twelve, she gave her first recital, and at the age of eighteen, her first concert as soloist at the Romanian Athenaeum. 

After graduating from the Bucharest Academy of Music in 1986, she joined the Ploiești State Symphony Orchestra as first harp. In 1988, she was invited to join the Thessaloniki State Orchestra. 

She was a member of the Thessaloniki Orchestra until 1990, when, at the invitation of Manos Hatzidakis, she joined the Orchestra of Colours. Since 1993, she has also played first harp with the National Symphony Orchestra of the Hellenic Radio and Television. 

In 1988, Maria Bîldea founded the first harp class at the Thessaloniki Conservatory, and in 1992, she established a class at the Athens Conservatory.

 She has performed with the greatest orchestras in Romania and Greece and she has given recitals and masterclasses in Romania, Serbia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, the United States, Spain, Cyprus, Slovenia, and Greece, at archaeological sites in Athens. 

Over the course of her career, she has worked with Sir Neville Mariner, Michel Plasson, Vangelis, and Horia Andreescu. She performed music by Eleni Karaindrou for the film Dust in Time, with her husband, violinist Sergiu Nastasa, and by Vangelis, for Oliver Stone’s Alexander. 

She founded the Aeolian Harps Quartet and is a founder member of the Kyklos Ensemble. She performs with Armonia Atenea, playing historical harps, and recently made a recording of Beethoven’s Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus with the orchestra for Decca.