Among her many students at the Jacobs School who went on to international careers as opera singers are Angela Brown, Nicole Chevalier, Vivica Genaux, Sylvia McNair, Marilyn Mims, Elizabeth Futral and Ailyn Perez. Zeani retired to West Palm Beach, Florida in 2004, but has continued to teach students privately. She was awarded Indiana University's President's Medal for Excellence in 2012 and in 2016 received the National Association of Teachers of Singing Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, she was named the "Classical Singer" Teacher of the Year. That year, she was also presented with the Marcello Giordani Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, the Virginia Zeani Festival had its inaugural season in Mures, Romania. Zeani's recorded legacy largely rests on the approximately 60 "pirate" and "off-air" recordings of full-length operas made in the course of her career. She made very few studio recordings—"Tosca", "La traviata" and a Verdi–Puccini recital released on LP by the Romanian Electrecord label, and a two-LP set of Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, and Puccini arias on the Decca label, recorded when Zeani was in her early 30s. In 2014, Decca reissued the LPs on compact disk in their "Most Wanted Recitals!" series. Zeani was made Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1965. In her native Romania she received the Royal Decoration of Nihil Sine Deo in 2011 and was made a Knight of the Order of the Star of Romania in 2016. She has also been the recipient of numerous opera awards, including the Puccini Award from the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano in 1992.