The daughter of Alexander Sumarokov, she was born and lived in St. Petersburg.
[2] Kniazhnina was the hostess of an important literary salon.
[3] She was the first Russian woman to write an elegy and is considered by Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary to be "the first Russian woman writer".
[4] as she, together with Elizaveta Kheraskova [ru] and Alexandra Rzhevskaia [ru] were the first women to see their works printed in Russian journals.
[3][5] Ivan Krylov wrote a parody about Kniazhnina and her husband in 1787, Prokazniki (The trouble-makers).