[1][2] Her father was descended of an impoverished Polish-Lithuanian noble family and worked as an engineer for the railroad, heading the construction of the Moscow-Yaroslavl line.

[1] Her paternal uncle, Joseph Antonovich Lubny-Gertsyk, built the Baranov Manufacturing plant in the Alexandrovsky District town of Karabanovo.

[2] Her mother, who died when Gertsyk and her sister, Eugenia, were young children was of German and Swiss heritage, though the family was entirely Russified, they were Lutheran.

[1][3] After their mother's death in 1880, Gertsyk's father remarried Eugenia Antonovna Vokach (Russian: Евгении Антоновны Вокач) and a half-brother Vladimir was born in 1885.

[4] All the children received a broad early education from by tutors and governesses, which included the study of five languages encompassing Polish and Italian, among others.

[4][5] Continuing her education, she was prepared for gymnasium following the curriculum of the Moscow Nobles Boarding School (ru) by the poet, M. A. Carlin (Russian: М. А. Карлин), from whom she developed a passion for writing.

[3][5] She also produced translations with her sister, Eugenia and began writing poetry during her relationship with Alexander Bobrychev-Pushkin [ru], a married lawyer and poet.

[8] Her first significant publication of her own poems appeared in the almanac of the Symbolists known as Flower Garden of First Ashes that same year, as the cycle Golden Key.

In January, 1909, in Paris, Gertsyk married Zhukovsky, a biologist, publisher, and translator of philosophical literature, who was a member of the Russian aristocracy and well-to-do.

[4][9] In 1910, her collection Стихотворения (Poems) was published and earned responses from the same group of noted poets, which was unusual praise for a Russian woman.

[3] From 1910 to 1917, Gertsyk published in the journals "Северные записки" (Northern Notes), "Альманах Муз" (Muses' Almanac) among others pursuing aesthetic themes.

[4] In 2006, Natalia K. Bonetskaia published a book, Русская Сивилла и её современники: творческий портрет Аделаиды Герцык (Russian Sibyl and her contemporaries: Artistic portrait of Adelaida Gertsyk) re-examining the significance of Gertsyk in light of her peers, and found that she was "one of the least known but brightest figures of the Russian Silver Age".