Friederike Fless was born in Unna in 1964. She studied classical archaeology, art history, and ancient history in Trier, Würzburg, and Mainz, where she completed her doctorate in 1992 with a thesis on “Propitiators and Cult Musicians on Urban Roman Historical Reliefs.” In 2000 Friederike Fless completed her habilitation requirements at the University of Cologne.

Since 2003 Friederike Fless has been a full professor at the Institute of Classical Archaeology at Freie Universität Berlin, where she has been the director of the Ancient World Interdisciplinary Center since 2004 and the director of the Excellence Cluster “Topoi – The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations” since 2007. Researchers within this interdisciplinary cluster, which is jointly operated by Freie Universität and Humboldt Universität, investigate the systematic connection between space and knowledge structures in the cultures of the Near East and Mediterranean, from early civilizations to late antiquity and the early medieval period.