The university originates in the Moscow Higher Courses for Women founded by Vladimir Guerrier in 1872.

[citation needed] In May 1872 the Russian Minister of Education, Count Dmitry Tolstoy, consented to the opening by Professor Guerrier of "Higher Women's Courses" as a private educational institution and approved Regulations for this purpose.

While still a young doctor, Anton Chekhov paid for his sister Masha to attend Guerrier courses.

[citation needed] Following the end of the Guerrier courses, public lectures for women were organized systematically, most of them given by the same teachers, and in the same premises, as before.

[citation needed] In 1900 the name Moscow Higher Women's Courses was instituted, and in 1906 a School of Medicine was launched.

In 1908 came the Anatomical Theatre, now the Russian State Medical University, and the Physical Chemistry Building, now the Moscow Academy of Fine Chemical Technology.

[11] From 1924 to 1930, the University's rector was Albert Petrovich Pinkevich, an educationist and author of The New Education in the Soviet Republic, who became a victim of Stalin's Great Purge, "disappearing" in 1937 to a Gulag labour camp.

[16] The Prometei publishing house, of Moscow, sometimes spelled Prometey, is attached to the University.