In 1974, Stella Pende began her career as a journalist working for Panorama, where she remained for most of her professional life, becoming a correspondent in the 1990s.

After receiving her professional journalist's card in 1979, she began writing for Maurizio Costanzo's newspaper, L'Occhio.

In 1982 she made her debut on national television and in 1988 became a correspondent for the magazine L'Europeo, establishing herself as one of the few journalists who managed to get close to the Libyan dictator Mu'ammar Gaddafi, whom she interviewed for Panorama. For twenty-five years, Pende wrote reportages on wars, natural catastrophes such as plagues, earthquakes and tsunamis; she was in the field in the conflict in Bosnia and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reporting on events in South Sudan and Africa in general.