Born in 1950 in St. Petersburg, at that time called Leningrad. Parents are engineers. Father - a participant in the Great Patriotic War. In 1975 she graduated from the evening department of the philological faculty of the Leningrad State University named after A.A. Zhdanov, Russian department. She worked in several organizations, from 1982 to 1991 - in the State Museum-Monument "St. Isaac's Cathedral," from where she was forced to leave due to a conflict with the director.