Zhemchuzhina was the director of the Soviet national cosmetics trust from 1932 to 1936, Minister of Fisheries in 1939, and head of textiles production in the Ministry of Light Industry from 1939 to 1948.

In 1948, Zhemchuzhina was arrested by the Soviet secret police, charged with treason, and sent into internal exile, where she remained until after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.

Zhemchuzhina was born Perl Solomonovna Karpovskaya to the family of a Jewish tailor Solomon Karpovsky in the village of Polohy, in the Alexandrovsky Uyezd (today Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine).

In 1920, she married Vyacheslav Molotov, by then a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

[4] In a secret meeting of the Politburo on 10 August 1939, the agenda item number 33, "Regarding Comrade Zhemchuzhina" and her alleged "connections to spies", led to a request to verify that information by the NKVD.

As it was customary during the Great Purges, many of her coworkers were arrested and questioned, but the "evidence" (frequently acquired by force) against her was so contradictory that on 24 October, the Politburo concluded the "allegations against comrade Zhemchuzhina's participation in sabotage and spying... to be considered slanderous."

On the Eastern Front, Zhemchuzhina actively supported the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and befriended many of its leading members, most notably Solomon Mikhoels.

Polina Zhemchuzhina befriended Golda Meir, who arrived in Moscow in November 1948 as the first Israeli envoy to the USSR.

[5] Fluent in Yiddish, Zhemchuzhina acted as a translator for a diplomatic meeting between Meir and her husband, the Soviet foreign minister.