Born in Lubny to the von Reiser family, which had a long history of military service to the Russian Tsars, she was educated at home, studying in her parents' library and with select tutors.

After her father died in 1859, together with her mother, brother, and maternal grandmother she moved to the Lodygyn/Lodigine family estates in the Tver province of the Russian Empire, near Moscow.

Though she did not finish her studies, Skarzhynska had developed an interest in culture and moving back to her father's estate, Kruglik, inspired her to begin collecting folk art and other artifacts.

Wilhelm Ulrich Vikentievich von Reiser also served in the Russian army, accompanying Suvorov to Switzerland, as did his son and Katya's father, Nikolai, who participated in the Battle of Warsaw.

[2] As her father spent much of his time away from the family, Katya and her brother Misha were raised mostly by her mother and maternal grandmother, Varvara Petrovna Lodygina.

[2] Though her grandmother wanted Katya to become a maid of honour to the imperial court, at the age of 12, von Reiser decided she would dedicate her life to helping the poor.

[2] When she turned 14, von Reiser set up a school for the former serfs on her grandparents' estate in Nikolskoye in the Vyshnevolotsky Uyezd and worked alongside the teacher she hired.

[2][7] In 1869, she became acquainted with Nikolai Georgievich Skarzhynsky, a nobleman, who became a major general in the Russian Army, specializing in providing horses for the cavalry.

[8][11] Fascinated by the local folk art and handicrafts, she began collecting artifacts,[2] with the help of historian Grigory Kiryakov [uk].

[4] In 1880, Skarzhynska founded the first private museum in Ukraine,[12] collaborating with the noted archaeologist and curator Fyodor Kaminsky [uk] on its organization.

[14] The museum was originally housed in a room in the Skarzhynsky's home, but later expanded to a two-story structure with a lobby and six exhibit halls, adjacent to a park and greenhouse.

[11] Skarzhynska made archaeological excavations in the mountains near Lubny[2] and led expeditions to dig in the Posulli grounds [uk], an historic area covering the Sula River basin.

[15] She also paid for excavations by Kaminsky and others, and established a program where she would pay a reward for the recovery of iconostasis and other artifacts, details of the history of rural churches, and items of local historic interest.

[12] Skarzhynska did not charge for entry to the museum, which contained over 35,000 items, including archaeological artifacts, coins, Cossack antiquities, personal archives and autographs of notable Ukrainian families, and 4,000 books, housed in a scientific library.

[4][13] In 1891, Kaminsky left the museum, and died later that same year, after recommending hiring his assistant, Sergiy Klimentiyovich Kulzhynskiy [uk] as replacement curator.

[12] These were catalogued by Skarzhynska and published in 1899 by Kulzhynskiy in a book Description of the Collection of Pysanky (Ukrainian: Описаніе коллекціи народныхъ писанокъ).

[11][22] She operated the museum until she left for Europe, finally giving her collections to the Poltava Zemstvo in 1906,[1] transferring over 37,000 objects in four railway boxcars.

[23][24] That year, the Museum of Natural History of Poltava Provincial Zemstvo made a second edition of her collection of pysanky, which included over 3,000 drawings.

Placing her husband in a private asylum in Kiev,[25][Notes 3] Skarzhynska and the tutor, Kulzhynskiy, took the youngest two children, Igor and Natalia, and a foster child, Olga Kiryakova, to Italy for their education.

[22] She published a magazine in Russian, Зарубежом (Abroad), which carried articles of interest, like the forced exodus of Georgians from their homeland and information on the Balkan Wars (1912–1913).

[2] She pressed the federal government of Switzerland to provide a nursery for the orphans of Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, and Turkish soldiers who were killed during the Balkan wars and raised the funds to finance it.

Though she was apolitical, her journal carried evaluations of various revolutionary movements,[11] including from leaders of both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks,[11][22] in an attempt to explore the ideological thought of her time.

[2][22] She set about collecting books to establish children's libraries for Poltava and Lubny, but she had to abandon the project, when she lost her fortune during the chaos of World War I and the Russian Revolution.

[2][11] In 1918, one of the military units occupied the coeducational gymnasium operated by Skarzhynska's daughter Olga, where Kulzhynskiy was teaching, and looted the premises, stealing the personal belongings and identity papers of the students and staff.

The head archivist wrote a letter to the Russian Academy of Sciences the following year, asking for the "government of the proletariat" to grant a pension to Skarzhynska, who had worked so long on behalf of common people.

[38] Her activities had a "significant impact on the development of cultural and scientific life in Ukraine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries".