Mercedes Otero was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She studied in her home country, in England, Italy and the United States.  As a classical guitarist, she studied with Gilbert Biberian and John Duarte in London.  Afterwards, she moved to Italy for a short time to enroll in the Instituto Viotti, Vercelli, to study with Angelo Gilardino and Giuseppe Rosetta. Returning to Venezuela, she studied Choral Conducting in the Choral Conductors’ School of Caracas, and composition with Hector Tossar.   She undertook graduate studies at the California State University, Northridge, where she studied with Aurelio de la Vega and Daniel Kessner, and was awarded a Master’s Degree with Distinction. 

Otero was born into a family of artists. Her mother, Mercedes Pardo, was a painter, and her father, Alejandro Otero, was mainly a sculptor. She had the privilege of growing up within a very motivating cultural atmosphere. Many artists from all fields gathered regularly at the family's home: musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, philosophers, playwrights, dancers, actors, composers, performers, and poets. Her parents collaborated many times with stage productions and costume designs for ballet, theater, and dance. Music was a main course in Otero's everyday life—all sorts of music, from contemporary to classical, folk, traditional, popular, rock and more. 

Otero began her musical career as a classical guitarist.  Later on, she focused on choral conducting and composition. Her studies took her from Venezuela to Great Britain, Italy, and the United States. She founded and conducted several choirs for different ages: children, teenagers, and adults. As a composer, Otero participated in Contemporary Music Festivals in Venezuela, Mexico, and the United States.  Her music has been used as sound tracks for documentary films about art. 

Otero considers herself an educator, not only because she has taught quite a lot, but because she loves teaching and finds that it is within her nature. She founded a school for children from 3 years of age to teenagers and adults, were she tried to reproduce her own educational experience, exploring at once different artistic languages: painting, modeling, music, acting; it was all about feeling, thinking, perceiving, and expressing. She found it to be a wonderful endeavor.

Otero has played different roles as a cultural manager: she was the President of one of the main orchestras in Caracas; President of a municipal institution in charge of the maintenance, recovery, and restoring of the constructed heritage of the City of Caracas. There she founded another school, teaching how to restore houses from colonial times, built with mud and wood, with very old, traditional techniques. Some years later, she was appointed vice-Dean of the Venezuelan University of the Arts, and Director of its Music Department. Nowadays, she runs the Otero-Pardo Foundation, a research center based on documents related to the artistic development in Venezuela, Latin America and beyond, during the second half of the 20th Century. The Foundation, educational in nature, honors the artistic and documentary legacy of Alejandro Otero, Mercedes Pardo, and their contemporaries: a collection started in the early 40’s, consisting of letters, news-paper clips, photography, films, catalogues, art books, art magazines, and more.