[6] After Abdul Hamid's accession to the throne on 31 August 1876,[7] the imperial family remained in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

In 1877, Zekiye and other members of the imperial family settled in the Yıldız Palace,[8] after Abdul Hamid moved there on 7 April 1877.

She first took her music education from Lombardi Bey, and following her marriage from Madame Avisnad Bavis, a French.

[16] This palace once belonged to her aunt Mediha Sultan, half-sister of her father, where she resided with her first husband.

[17] Zekiye moved to Ortaköy Palace, on the second day after the marriage, where 80 men and 80 women were in their service.

[18] Zekiye Sultan and Ali Nureddin Pasha esteemed music, and she used to play piano at her mansion.

Rumours had it that Nureddin Paşa had met a beautiful Greek Ottoman woman outside Bon Marché in Beyoğlu and that she later became his mistress.

The rumours reached Abdülhamid II, who urged Zekiye Sultan to divorce her husband but she refused.

[23] Zekiye Sultan died on 13 July 1950 in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France at the age of seventy-eight, and was buried there.