St. Elizabeth was an older sister of the Empress Alexandra of Russia, and was married to the Grand Duke Serge, a younger son of Tsar Alexander III and the Governor of Moscow. She converted from the Protestant faith to Orthodoxy several years after her marriage of her own free will, and organized women from all levels of society to help the sick and needy.

Grand Duke Serge was killed by an assassin’s bomb on February 4, 1905, just as St Elizabeth was leaving for her workshops. She visited her husband’s killer in prison and urged him to repent, giving him an icon. She eventually built a shrine over the site of her husband’s martyrdom (which was said to have been destroyed by Vladimir Lenin himself in 1917).

After her husband’s murder, she began to withdraw from her former social life. She founded the Convent of Sts. Martha and Mary in Moscow, a community of nuns which focused on worshiping God and helping the poor. She sold all her fine clothes and jewels, and moved out of her palace into the buildings that she had purchased on behalf of the convent.