Zinaida Ivanova was born 1865 in Sychyovsky Uyezd, in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire. She grew up in Moscow, graduating from the Courses Guerrier for Women in 1897. Shortly afterwards, she married and began to volunteer with the Moscow Commission on the Organization of Home Reading (Moskovskaia Kommissiia po Organizatsii Domashnego Chteniia). Fluent in English, French, German, Norwegian, Finnish and Russian, she began freelance writing and translating. As that dried up in the early years of the first decade of the 20th century, she turned to lecture tours to supplement her income. Ivanova died on 24 August 1913, at Vladykino, a suburb of Moscow.Ruthchild, pp. 344–45
