[1][2] Molodowsky first came to prominence as a poet and intellectual in the Yiddish literary world while living in Warsaw, in the newly independent Poland, during the interwar period.

[6][7] Born in the shtetl of Byaroza-Kartuskaya (now Byaroza), in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), Molodowsky was educated at home in both religious and secular subjects.

[4] While her father, a teacher in a traditional Jewish elementary school (cheder), instructed her in the Torah, her paternal grandmother taught her Yiddish; with private tutors she studied secular subjects in Russian, including geography, philosophy, and world history.

[2] After then obtaining her teaching certificate in Byaroza, she studied Hebrew pedagogy under Yehiel Halperin in Warsaw, in 1913–1914, and, in the latter part of that period, instructed children there who had been displaced during the First World War.

[7] From 1949 to 1952 Molodowsky and her husband lived in Tel Aviv, in the new state of Israel, where she edited the Yiddish journal Di Heym (Home),[7] published by the Working Women's Council (Moetzet Hapoalot).