His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was a prominent opponent of anti-semitism in Tsarist Russia and wrote articles deploring the Kishinev pogrom.

She ended her own budding career as a writer to support her husband as a critic, reader, and typist, and sustained the family through her work as a secretary and translator.

After moving to the United States in 1940, she learned to drive and chauffeured her husband on many field trips, notably in the Pacific Northwest, to hunt butterflies.

Upon the couple's return to Europe in 1960, she resided with her husband at the Montreux Palace Hotel where she continued to manage his affairs, and after his death in 1977, his estate.

Upon his death, Vladimir had requested his final work, The Original of Laura, be burned, but neither Véra nor Dmitri could bring themselves to destroy the manuscript, and eventually it was published in 2009.