Having squandered all of his money and most of the family's property, he shot himself, leaving his wife Margarita Ottovna (née Loewenstein) with two young daughters and without any means.

Soon, along with her sister Elena, she established contacts with her late father's relatives, notably Pavel Tretyakov, the Tretyakovskaya Gallery founder, who introduced them to the world of fine arts.

A frequent guest in the house of the latter's brother, publisher Anatoly Mamontov, she met there Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, Ilya Ostroukhov and Alexey Korovin, among others.

In November 1905 Morozova (alongside Sergey Bulgakov, Prince Yevgeny Trubetskoy and Nikolai Berdyayev among others) became one of the organizers of the Moscow Religious and Philosophical Society.

[2][3] Much publicized at the time was her romance with the poet Andrey Bely who recognized some mystical reasons behind his infatuation with her (which started in 1901) and signed his early love letters as "Your Knight".

[4] For Bely Morozova has become what Lydia Mendeleeva (as a Beautiful Dame) was for Alexander Blok; this love has shaped his whole artistic world and inspired his best known works (like "First Rendes-vous", 1921).

In March 1905 the pair started the newspaper Moskovsky Ezhenedelnik (The Moscow Weekly), with Trubetskoy as an editor, which lasted till August 1910.

[5] In March 1910, Morozova launched Put (The Path) publishing house which specialized in religious and philosophical literature (Vladimir Solovyov, Berdyayev, Bulgakov, Trubetskoy himself, Pavel Florensky).