Victoria Atanasova Zhivkova was born on 29 September 1859 in Tarnovo, in Ottoman Bulgaria to Neda Spiridonova and Atanas Zhivkov.

She was the youngest of five children,[1] including sisters, Mariola and Rose,[2] and brothers, Georgi Zhivkov [bg] who was a politician and served three times as head of the National Assembly of Bulgaria,[3] and Nikola Zhivkov, founder of the first kindergarten in Bulgaria and poet who wrote the lyrics of the national anthem, Shumi Maritsa.

In 1874, Zhivkova and her brother Nikola used their summer holiday to collect monies to build a girls' school and church in Varna.

When the war ended in 1878,[2] Zhivkova obtained a scholarship from the Slavic Charity Committee of St. Petersburg[1] and began attending pedagogical courses at the Mariinsky high school for girls, graduating in 1881.

In July 1885,[2] she established with Dimitar the first socialist journal in Bulgaria, Modern Trends (Bulgarian: Съвременний показател) which they co-edited.

[2] Because of her outspoken political ideology and support for Socialism, Blagoevna was repeatedly transferred or dismissed from teaching posts.

She founded a journal called Women's Labor (Bulgarian: Дамски труда) where she began advocating for worker's rights.

These actions drew criticism, including from her husband, on the basis that male colleagues believed that women should remain part of the united workers movement.