[1] The daughter of Oleksandr Shcherbachov, a published author of Russian descent, and a Ukrainian mother, she was born Lyubov Shcherbachova in eastern Ukraine.

Her parents separated due to tensions caused by their different ethnic backgrounds.

[1] In 1905, Yanovska moved to Kyiv, where she became involved in literary circles and the women's movement.

After 1916, she was no longer able to write because of health problems aggravated by her work helping women and children left in poverty by World War I.

[1] Her work was translated to English for the collections In the Dark of the Night (1998) and Warm the Children, O Sun (1998).