Manuela Paladin Šabanović was born in Rijeka, Croatia. She studied scenography and costume design at the Istituto Europea di Design in Rome and fashion design at the Instituti Callegari in Milan. She is a 2007 graduate of the Rijeka Academy of Art Department of Sculpture. Since 2011 she has worked as a costume designer, and is the costume director at the Croatian National Theatre Ivan Zanc (in Rijeka), where she has created the costumes for over 40 theatre productions. Šabanović has worked with various theatres in Croatia, Italy, Montenegro and Finland. Scheherazade and Her Tales is her fourth collaboration with choreographer Leo Mujic.