Born in Saint Petersburg into a family with German-Jewish roots whose professionals included merchants, doctors, composers and academics, Simonovich-Efimova was highly educated, spending almost two decades studying art in both Russia and Paris to perfect her craft.

[6] Her mother, denied higher education in her home country, went to Switzerland, where she learned the methods of Friedrich Fröbel before returning to Saint Petersburg where she opened the first kindergarten in Russia in 1866.

She left Tbilisi in 1899 and went to Paris where she studied drawing under Auguste Joseph Delécluse for a year, before returning to Moscow to take private painting courses with Elizaveta Nikolaevna Zvantseva, her cousin Serov, and attend classes at the Stroganov School.

Simonvich returned to Paris in 1901 and studied painting with Eugène Carrière through the end of the following year,[9] learning the Impressionist style of masters such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh.

The couple then traveled back to Paris briefly, before moving in 1912 to Lipetsk where they spent a few months on the Efimov family estate known as "Otradnoe".

[3][7] Her works in the period between 1911 and 1915 were of traditional composition and showed strong use of bold colors, particularly evident in her paintings of Russian peasants.

[12] She presented silhouettes with restrained detail in theatrical performances similar to shadow plays, using blue cellophane to filter the light, unifying various shapes and adding luster to the overall effect.

Simonovich-Efimova's career turned toward professional puppetry, creating a mobile theater, with the purpose of providing a joyful distraction to the civil war.

Giving over seventy shows in Moscow and the surrounding area, they traveled up and down the Kama and Volga Rivers over the summer months, performing their version of Petrushka and of Krylov's fables.

[19] By the fall of 1918, the couple's popularity resulted in their being invited to set up a children's theater in line with the government's socialist restructuring policy.

They included adaptations of traditional themes such as the Mena stories, Baba Yaga, Shrovetide, and Nikolay Nekrasov's Peasant Children.

[23] Wishing to complement her involvement in performance, Simonovich-Efimova began publishing works "to establish puppetry's validity as a unique discipline" within the visual arts realm.

One of her best known works, Notes of a Petrushkanist (Russian: Записки петрушечника, 1925) gives details of her performances and theories, together with drawings and texts of her plays.

The artistry in creating vitality involved an intimate connection between puppet and puppetmaster, a feat she felt could not be achieved in the same way with marionettes.

[27] In 1935, Simonovich-Efimova's Notes was translated and published in English, as The Adventures of a Russian Puppet Theatre, bringing her ideas to international attention.

[29] In 1940, she published additional designs and theories of manikins in Rod Puppets (sometimes translated as Dolls on Canes) (Russian: Куклы на тростях).

[34] These innovations allowed their finely formed, elegantly clad puppets to move about naturally, rather than with the stiff, jerky movements of their predecessors.

She was inspired to depict women in their regional dress digging potatoes, comforting their children, or attending fairs and festivals.

[12] Beginning in 1928 and continuing until 1942, Simonovich-Efimova taught techniques of shadow theater in courses at the House of Art Education, named after Nadezhda Krupskaya.

She also taught at Moscow's Museum for the Protection of Maternity and Infancy, the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation and the variety theater of the Mosesstrana.

In the 1930s, she worked as an interior designer for some of the public buildings of Moscow and created moving silhouette compositions for the Central Museum of Ethnology and the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (ru) (Russian: Всесоюзная сельскохозяйственная выставка (ВСХВ)).

Simonovich-Efimova worked in the Lefortovo District at the First Mobile Hospital tending to wounded soldiers and writing letters for them to their families and comrades.

In the evenings, the couple worked on puppetry,[39] preparing concerts and puppet shows for the troops based on historic and patriotic themes.

[41] The following year, her 1935 book, Adventures of a Russian Puppet Theatre: Including Its Discoveries in Making and Performing with Hand-Puppets, Rod-Puppets and Shadow-Figures (English version) was reprinted by Martino Publishing.