Elisabeth (Liz) Findlay was born in Athens. In 1951 the Red Cross resettled her family in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her mother taught her and her sisters to sew, but she never trained formally in fashion. At 21 she moved to Auckland and took a job with a clothing company, where she learned to use industrial machines and came to understand how clothes are produced.
In 1976, encouraged by her sister Margi Robertson, she opened Tart, a boutique in Parnell, selecting labels to her own taste, including New Zealand designers such as Marilyn Sainty, and selling a few pieces of her own. A second store, Cachet, followed in Takapuna in 1978.
In 1979 her husband, Neville Findlay, left his work as a design engineer and together they founded Zambesi. Their first store opened that year at 31 Lorne Street in central Auckland, with a second in Queen's Arcade in 1981. In 1986 the two were merged into a flagship on Vulcan Lane, which remained the label's home until 2012, when it moved to Britomart.
International recognition arrived in 1991, when Zambesi was among the first New Zealand labels invited to show at Australian Fashion Week in Sydney, the first year New Zealand designers took part. Auckland Museum devoted an exhibition to the house, Zambesi: Edge of Darkness, in 2005.
One of six children, she is the sister of Margarita (Margi) Robertson, founder of the label NOM*d. She met Neville Findlay in Auckland in 1969, and they married in 1971. "Neville convinced me ... to follow my dream," she told the Otago Daily Times. "I still have my feet on the ground and my head is still in the clouds."
Zambesi has shown at New Zealand Fashion Week almost every year since the event began in 2001, when its collection Birds of Paradox opened the inaugural week at the Auckland War Memorial Museum with a pōwhiri. Its shows have often left the runway for other settings, among them the St James Theatre with a live rock band. "Our shows are more than just the clothes," Findlay has said. "It's a marriage of audio/visual coming together and creating an experience." In 2019 the house marked forty years with a runway retelling of its archive; it remains a family business, with the Findlays' daughters Marissa and Sophie working alongside them.
In December 2023 Zambesi released its first fragrance, 1979, named for its founding year and made with the New Zealand fragrance house The Virtue; Findlay described herself as its muse. The label continues to make much of its work in New Zealand, and in 2025 she spoke frankly about a shrinking local supply chain, from zips to specialist print works. "We've been around for 46 years, and there's always been constant change and constant challenges," she said. "This country has great freedom to explore and to express."
In the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours, both Liz and Neville Findlay were appointed Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business and fashion.