Born in 1927, she studied law and art history and became acquainted with filmmaking by following the film directing course of the famous director Jean Georgescu, but she was more of a self-taught filmmaker. She was assistant director on several films including Georgescu’s Our Director/Directorul nostru (Studioul Cinematografic Bucureşti,1955).

After being persecuted politically, imprisoned and banned from the movie industry for several years she made her first feature in 1968, The Mona Lisa without a Smile/Gioconda fără surâs (Studioul Cinematografic Bucuresşi, 1968). She went on to direct another nine features, her last film being What a Happy World/Ce lume veselă…(Ager Film, agerfilm.ro, 2003). For nine of them she also wrote the script.

In all of her films she focused on the relationship between man and time despite the genre: historical drama, contemporary drama or romance. Her most accomplished features are Evening/Serata (1971), Fleeting Loves/Trecătoarele iubiri (Casa de filme 3, 1974) and Întoarcerea lui Vodă Lăpuşneanu/ The Return of King Lăpuşneanu (Casa de filme 3, 1980).

Most of her films were awarded with the national prizes of ACIN (Romanian Filmmakers Association) which became UCIN (Romanian Filmmakers Union) after 1990. Urşianu was awarded Knight with the National Order for Merit by the Romanian president Emil Constantinescu in 2000.