Adele Schlombs attended Cologne and Heidelberg Universities, where she studied Sinology, East Asian art history, European art history, and comparative religious studies. She studied at Kyoto University from 1984 to 1987 and received her PhD from Heidelberg University in 1989. She became the director of the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne in 1991 and has staged numerous loan exhibitions of Japanese and Chinese art since then.