Ulyanova excelled in academics and planned to become a teacher, but was denied the position due to her brother Aleksandr Ulyanov's criminal offenses as a revolutionary.

Ulyanova had hoped to practice medicine once completing her studies, but died after contracting typhoid fever just six months after arriving in St. Petersburg.

Her father was the son of Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanov, a former serf who received his freedom from the landowner Stepan Mikhailovich Brekhov.

[3] In January 1882, her father's dedication to education earned him the Order of Saint Vladimir, which bestowed on him and the Ulyanov family the status of hereditary nobility.

[3] Ulyanova applied for a teaching position in Samara but was denied the post due to being related to a state criminal, as her brother, Alexander, had been executed in 1887 for revolutionary tendencies.