Rose quartz occurs in pegmatites. It forms at very high temperatures, between 400°C and 700°C, thus sometimes beyond the inversion temperature at which the transition from low to high quartz takes place (573°C). These conditions could be called pneumatolytic, that is, the rose quartz grew in a gaseous supercritical phase, not from a watery solution, as most other quartz varieties do. Rose quartz is also found in massive hydrothermal veins, but more rarely.
Rose quartz is usually mined manually from pegmatites, explosives would shatter the rocks and cause fine cracks in the specimen that decrease their value.