Prior to NYPL, Denise was a fellow at the Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She interned at a variety of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Barnes Foundation, and the National Galleries of Scotland; and was a technician at the National Museum of Natural History. She was a BPG Wiki Coordinator from 2015 - 2019. As a founding member of the Sustainability Committee, she developed the original Sustainability Wiki pages. She earned an MA with a certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from Buffalo State College and a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University.