[4] Alexandre was born into the artistic and intellectual Benois family, prominent members of the 19th- and early 20th-century Russian intelligentsia.

Not planning a career in the arts, Alexandre graduated from the Faculty of Law, Saint Petersburg Imperial University, in 1894.

[4] During the first decade of the new century, Benois continued to edit Mir iskusstva, but also pursued his scholarly and artistic interests.

In 1903, Benois printed his illustrations to Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman, a work since recognized as one of the landmarks in the genre.

In 1901, Benois was appointed scenic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, the performance space for the Imperial Russian Ballet.

Surviving the upheaval of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Benois achieved recognition for his scholarship; he was selected as curator of the gallery of Old Masters in the Hermitage Museum at Leningrad, where he served from 1918 to 1926.

They first met in 1876 when Alexandre was learning music from the family patriarch, Karl Ivanovich Kind (who first came to Russia in the late 1840s, becoming a first violinist in the orchestra of the Saint Petersburg opera).