Hans Vent was born in 1934 in Weimar (Thuringia). From 1948 was an apprentice painter and decorator, and from 1952 attended the School of Building Technology in Weimar. In 1958 he began his study of painting at the Weissensee University of the Arts in East Berlin. From 1976 to 1982 he taught there. In 1977 he was awarded the Art Prize of the GDR, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of Arts of the GDR in 1982. Vent died in Berlin in 2018.
In 2019 the Hans Vent Foundation was established in the Dr Walter and Margarete Cajewitz Foundation.