Maria Lebedeva was born in St. Petersburg in 1895. In 1917, she graduated from the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, where she studied under artist Ivan Bilibin, famous for his Art Nouveau-inspired illustrations of Russian folk tales. As a student, she traveled to northern Russian cities to study vernacular art and architecture. Upon graduation, Lebedeva practiced graphic and applied arts. She participated in exhibitions of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) and Obshchina Khudozhnikov (Artists’ Commune) groups. After the October Revolution in 1917, Lebedeva found employment as an art teacher in schools and as an art director in children’s clubs.

Between 1919 and 1924, Lebedeva worked at a painting workshop of the former Baron A. L. Stieglitz School (now the St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Industry named after A. L. Stieglitz). In 1923, the Vitebsk Art-Practice Institute was reorganized as Vitebsk Art-Practice Technical School, the directorship of which went to sculptor Michael Kerzin, who invited Lebedeva (among other artists) to join the school’s faculty. At the Vitebsk Art-Practice Institute, Lebedeva taught applied arts. She also undertook field trips to Polotsk to study its medieval frescoes. As a member of the Commission for the Protection of Monuments, Lebedeva cleared the murals in Pyatnitskaya and Borisoglebskaya churches in Polotsk, and photographed and sketched the cathedral.

In 1924, Lebedeva with her colleagues Kerzin, Valentin Volkov and Mikhail Ende, and the students of the technical school A. Puzynkevich and A. Volkhonsky, painted the lobby and the hall of the Khudozhestvennyi (Artistic) cinema in Vitebsk. The three paintings in the lobby featured (respectively) groups of peasant women, of factory workers, and of holiday-makers. They were adorned with stylized Belarusian ornaments and the symbols of the Soviet revolution. The cinema’s hall was decorated with the image of Prometheus surrounded by other figures.  In 1960, the paintings would be criticized for their “pseudo-national stylization.”

In addition to teaching at the Vitebsk Technical School, Lebedeva practiced printmaking and was a member of the Belarusan art association Pramen. Her work was exhibited in the Soviet Union and abroad, including the International Art Exhibition in Paris in 1925 and the exhibitions of Russian art in Vienna and Berlin in 1930.

In 1936, the construction of the Government Building after the design of Iosif Langbard was completed in Minsk. Addressing the design of the Palace of Soviets in Moscow 1932, a decree of the USSR Construction Council had recommended using “both new and the best techniques of classical architecture.” This principle was subsequently extended to other projects. Following its call, Langbard’s the interior of the Government Building in Minsk tested new monumental techniques. It included murals, sculptural bas-reliefs, and mosaics. The work on interior decoration was led by artist Vladimir Frolov, with Lebedeva participating in the design of the murals. The ceiling, which she painted with I. Frank, follows compositional rules of Classicism but features the scenes from Soviet industrialization and is decorated with Belarussian ornament.

By the time she was working on the Government Building in Minsk, Lebedeva had already moved from Belarus to Leningrad, where she was employed at the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory, working on the design of the so-called propaganda porcelain. She died in 1942.