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Born in Buffalo, New York, Anita King earned degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Iowa where she completed her Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance and Pedagogy in 1981. A winner of several piano competitions, King has appeared as piano soloist with the Omaha Symphony, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Pueblo Symphony, the Oberlin Orchestra, the University of Iowa Orchestra, and the Salem Chamber Orchestra. She was pianist for the Iowa Center for New Music and was piano soloist in the Berg Chamber Concerto. King performs regularly as soloist and chamber musician and has collaborated with such artists as cellist Fred Sherry, clarinetist David Shifrin, the Ridge String Quartet, sopranos Barbara Pearson, Susan Narucki, Nancy Zylstra, and Kym Amps, and pianist Charles Wadsworth. King was a member of Trio Northwest (piano, violin, cello) in residence at Willamette University from 1986-1997. In 1989 Trio Northwest toured South America as winners of the U.S. Information Agency "Artistic Ambassador" auditions. The Trio performed 23 concerts and presented master classes in 5 countries.

Since joining the faculty of Willamette University in 1981, King has taught piano, accompanying, chamber music, and advanced music analysis courses. She has also participated in interdisciplinary teaching which reflects her interest in the relationships between the arts. In 1989 King won the prestigious Graves Award which sent her to England to pursue an intensive study of Shakespeare. In 1993 and 1995 King presented a series of public lectures on Schubert's song cycles, Die Schone Mullerin and Winterreise in which she explored the relationship of poetry to music. She performed both cycles with baritone, Julio Viamonte.

Since 1997, King has been immersed in the field of kinesthetic re-education as it relates to musicians' health. King began studying with Barbara Conable in the spring of 1998 and became a certified Andover Educator in the fall of 2000. She is currently completing her training to become a teacher of the Alexander Technique and for 10 years has been integrating the work of Dorothy Taubman which provides movement re-education for pianists. King has created a college course for musicians (offered every semester at Willamette University) in which she teaches body mapping and the Alexander Technique. She is available to give the six-hour course "What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body" to groups of musicians as well as workshops designed specifically for pianists.