An 1862 Smolny Institute graduate, she started writing in 1863 on issues of women's emancipation and pedagogy for the magazines like Detskoye Chteniye and Narodnaya Shkola.

[1] Many of Vodovozova's ideas originated during an extensive trip over Belgium, Germany, England, Switzerland and France which she and her husband Vasily Ivanovich undertook soon after their marriage in April 1862, in order to investigate the theories of Friedrich Fröbel and how they worked in practice.

Her influential book "Intellectual Development of Children" (Умственное развитие детей от первого появления сознания до восьмилетнего возраста, 1871) enjoyed seven re-issues in pre-1917 Russia.

Географические рассказы, 1875—1883), reissued in ten volumes as "How People of Different Nations Live" (Как люди на белом свете живут, 1894—1901).

Much lauded were her books Among the Petersburg Youth of the Sixties (Среди петербургской молодёжи шестидесятых годов, 1911) and Things Long Gone (Из давнопрошедшего, 1915).