She died during a bombing attack on 4 December 1943 less than a month after she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin on 17 November 1943 for her bravery in the Kerch-Eltigen operation.

[1] Petrova was born on 9 September 1920 to a Russian family in Mykolaiv, Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union.

In 1940 after she graduated from secondary school with honors she entered the Forestry Department of the Novocherkassk Engineering Institute in Rostov.

Less than a month after she received the award she was injured while holding back German soldiers in a series of following counterattacks in Eltigen on 3 December.

Monuments in her likeness are present at the forestry institute where she studied and at the medical school in Kerch named after her.