Mukhina was born 1889 in Riga, Russian Empire into a wealthy merchant family, and lived at 23/25 Turgeneva Street, where a memorial plaque has now been placed.

[2] She spent her childhood and youth (1892-1904) in Feodosia where her father took her considering his daughter's health (Vera was two years old when her mother died of tuberculosis).

[4] She later moved to Moscow, where she studied at several private art schools, including those of Konstantin Yuon and Ilya Mashkov.

[10] In the 1920s Mukhina rose to become one of the Soviet Union's most prominent sculptors, and although she continued to produce Cubist sculpture as late as 1922, she became a leading figure of Socialist realism, both in style and ideology.

In 1923 Mukhina together with Aleksandra Ekster designed the pavilion of the newspaper Izvestia at the first all-Russia agricultural and handicraft-industrial exhibition in Moscow.

In 1925 Mukhina and Nadezhda Lamanova, the fashion designer, received the Grand Prix at the exhibition in Paris for the collection of elegant women's clothing made of cheap coarse materials — cloth, calico, canvas and flannel, hats-from matting, belts decorated with colored peas, and buttons carved from wood.

In 1927 the sculpture Peasant woman created by Mukhina was awarded the first prize at the exhibition dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution.

In 1938–1939 she worked on the sculptures for the Moskvoretsky Bridge, Hymn to the International, Flame of the Revolution, Sea, Land, Fertility, and Bread.

This sculptural composition is located in front of the main facade of the Conservatory and is the dominant feature of the entire architectural complex.

She decorated exhibitions, made industrial drawings, and designed clothes, textiles, porcelain and theatrical costumes for the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow.

[citation needed] From 1941 to 1952, Mukhina won the Stalin Prize five times, and she was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1943.

[17] The Museum of Vera Mukhina dedicated to the sculptor's adolescence and work was established in Feodosiya, Ukrainian SSR in 1985.

Mukhina's most celebrated work by far is the giant monument Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, which was the centerpiece of the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris.

As a result, the sculpture group was distinguished by an unusual expression and energy, symbolizing the Soviet Union aspiring to new victories.

The monument was called by the French press "the greatest work of sculpture of the XX century", and Pablo Picasso wrote: "How beautiful the Soviet giants are against the lilac Parisian sky".