Born in New York City, Rossant is the daughter of New Yorker James Rossant, architect and designer of Reston, Virginia, and Parisienne Colette Rossant, cookbook author and food writer. She traces her maternal line back through the Palacci family, Sephardic Jews who moved from Spain to Italy to Istanbul to Cairo. Her great-great-grandfather owned lemon perfume factories in Upper Egypt. Her great-grandfather owned a well-known department store in Cairo. Her grandfather, Vita Palacci, worked in exports and imports in support of the department store; he met her grandmother Marceline in Paris.

After graduating from St. Ann's School in Brooklyn,, Rossant attended Dartmouth College and then the Johns Hopkins University, where she studied Creative Writing.

Rossant started publishing poems in Extensions literary magazine when she was 14 years old. At Dartmouth, she co-founded The Stonefence Review literary magazine as an alternative to the highly conservative Dartmouth Review. She studied under Richard Eberhart and Kenneth Koch.

Overseas

Rossant began work in Journalism while living in Istanbul in the late 1980s. She continued as a journalist while based in Paris, Moscow, and Jeddah, writing for newspapers and magazines (including Business Week). Her reportage included the Kurds in Northern Iraq during the Gulf War, fighting between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabagh, and developments in the oil industry in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Forbes

Returning to the U.S., Rossant joined Forbes and Forbes Global to write on international business including the Forbes annual, global Billionaires List. Because of her Middle East experience, she covered the "Africa and Middle East" sections of that list every year with Forbes.

Rossant also started the Celebrity Chefs column in the Forbes annual Celebrity 100 issue, which she wrote for three years.

Super Chef

Book

Simon & Schuster published Rossant's book Super Chef (Free Press imprint), based on a specific definition she developed from her work at Forbes. The book profiles six "super chefs": Wolfgang Puck, Charlie Palmer, Todd English , Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger (AKA the "Too Hot Tamales"), and Tom Colicchio. The book was nominated by Fast Company magazine for best book. Several cooking schools for chefs have used the book as a textbook.

Magazine

Rossant continues to track the development of super chefs in Super Chef, online magazine by the same name. In 2005, the magazine championed the White House's selection of the first woman executive chef and then predicted the First Lady's choice of Cristeta Comerford. In late 2009, Super Chef began publishing in a new format. In early 2010, the magazine began running contributions, particularly from chefs.

Other activities

Rossant has consulted to a number of companies on branding issues related to super chefs.

Rossant has become an expert, city by the Newsweek, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Brand Channel, and Gastronomica. She has lectured at the Culinary Institute of America and the Institute for Culinary Education. She has also contributed to publications, from Portfolio to Saudi Aramco World.

She also continues to write books. She has just completed a children's book for publication and is working on her first novel.