Born in Nagaevo, Russia, on July 3, 1881, Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova moved to Moscow to attend school in 1892, where she met Mikhail Larionov, who encouraged her to paint and became her lifelong companion. The following year, she enrolled at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture to study sculpture. Goncharova participated in an exhibition of Russian artists organized by Sergei Diaghilev at the 1906 Salon d'Automne in Paris. Her early work shows the influence of Impressionism, Fauvism, and Russian folk sculpture.

Goncharova participated in numerous important exhibitions of new art in Moscow. While she favored Primitivist and Cubist styles, she adopted Cubo-Futurist and Rayonist (for which she credited as a founder) styles around 1912. She was represented at the second Blau Reiter exhibition in 1912 and the 'Erste deutsche Herbstsalon' at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1913. Around this time, she and Larionov began their collaboration with Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, which lasted until the impresario's death in 1929. Goncharova was also involved with graphic design—writing and illustrating several avant-garde books

She settled permanently in Paris in 1917, and became French citizen in 1938. Although she never abandoned any one form of art, much of her attention was focused on stage decoration, and book illustration with lithography. Goncharova showed extensively during the 1920s and 1930s, often with Larionov, in Europe, the United States, and Japan. She designed costumes, settings, and drop curtains for international presentations of modern and classical ballets until she was in her 70s. Natalia Gonchavrova married Laironov in 1955 for inheritance purposes. In 1956 she was given a retrospective at the Galerie de l’Institut in Paris.

Natalia Sergeenva Goncherova died in Paris on October 17, 1962.