Rosenzweig attended Cook College (at Rutgers University) earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in agricultural sciences in 1980. Rosenzweig's focus on agriculture began in 1969, when she and her future husband rented and operated a farm in Tuscany, Italy, picking grapes and olives and raising animals like goats, pigs, ducks, and geese.[6] She decided to return to university to study agriculture, earning a Master of Science degree in Soils and Crops from Rutgers University in 1983.[7] During her Master's, she was hired by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies to study cropland using satellite data. She then earned her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences in 1991.[7]