After studying at Munich’s Akademie Mode & Design, Petra Reinhardt trained under Vera Marzot, Luchino Visconti’s costume designer. She has worked as an assistant at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, the Stuttgart Staatstheater, Strasbourg’s Rhine Opera, the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and at theatres in Frankfurt, Bonn, and Augsburg. She also has an acting career in cinema, television and theatre. In 1990 and 1991, she created the costumes for Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Henze’s Il matrimonio segreto, and Pollicino in Munich. She then collaborated with Peter Pabst in creating the costumes for Klaus Maria Brandauer’s film adaptation of Mario und der Zauberer. She designed the costumes for Werther at the Vienna Staatsoper. She worked with Klaus Maria Brandauer again on a production of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera in Berlin, and Lohengrin in Cologne. She has also collaborated with William Friedkin (Salomé and Rihm’s Das Gehege at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich), José Cura (Leoncavallo’s La commedia è finita in Fiume and Un ballo in maschera in Cologne), Johannes Schaaf (Die Fledermaus in Amsterdam, Tosca in Dresden, Respighi’s Marie Victoire at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin), Chen Shi-Zheng (Farewell my concubine in Beijing and John Adams’ Nixon in China at the Théâtre du Châtelet), Jasmin Solfaghari (Ein Nacht in Venedig in Dresden), Fanny Ardant (Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at the Greek National Opera) and Robert Carsen (Die Zauberflöte at the Baden-Baden Festival and the Paris Opera, Battistelli’s CO2 at Milan’s La Scala, Campra’s Les Fêtes vénitiennes at the Opéra-Comique, Don Carlo at the Rhine Opera, L’Orfeo at the Lausanne Opera, The Beggar’s Opera at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, and The Tempest at the Comédie Française).She created the costumes for Der Traumgörge at the Opéra national de Lorraine, I Capuleti e i Montecchi at Milan's La Scala and together with the director Claus Guth, Bluthaus de Haas at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and Don Carlo at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.