From 1941 to 1943 she worked as a librarian at the Tashkent Secondary School No. 24, and between 1943 and 1945 as a singer for the choir of the Radio of the Uzbek SSR. She is the first woman to become a professional Shashmaqam singer. After World War 2, she and her husband immigrated to Stalinabad (Dushanbe) and made her career as a singer there, working since 1950 as a soloist of the Radio Department of the Tajik SSR. Barno Iskhakova was considered one of the greatest modern female singers in the history of Central Asia and Tajikistan. She was married to singer Isroel Badalbayev, although she retained her original surname as a stage name.
