Marfa Stepanovna Sabinina was the daughter of the Russian archpriest Stefan Sabinin [de] in Weimar in Saxony. She studied music with Georg and Clara Schumann, Peter Cornelius, and Franz Liszt, and worked as a music teacher at Weimar from 1854 to 1860. She received an appointment as court music teacher to the children of Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg, where she served from 1855 to 1881.
