The church is located in Gethsemane, near the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, on the slope of the Mount of Olives. It was built by the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society with funds from the imperial family in memory of Empress Maria Alexandrovna and consecrated in 1888 in honor of St. Mary Magdalene. Since 1921, the relics of the holy martyrs Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and nun Barbara have been kept here.

The idea of building the church in memory of Empress Maria Alexandrovna belonged to the head of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem, Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin), who also proposed the site on the slope of the Mount of Olives for its construction. By the autumn of 1882, the land was acquired. Architect David Grimm developed the project, and the church was laid on January 21, 1885. The construction was carried out by the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society under the guidance of Archimandrite Antonin. The work was done by Jerusalem architects Konrad Schick and later Georgy Frangia. Tsar Alexander III donated 100,000 rubles for the construction, his brothers contributed 15,000 each, and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna donated 5,000 rubles. The Patriarch of Jerusalem consecrated the church in October 1888 in the presence of Grand Dukes Sergei Alexandrovich and Pavel Alexandrovich, as well as Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.

In January 1921, the bodies of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and her maid Barbara, transported from Russia through China, were buried in the church. The burial was performed by Patriarch Damian of Jerusalem.

In 1934, a Scottish woman named Maria (Robinson), who converted to Orthodoxy, established a women's Orthodox community here in the name of the Resurrection of Christ and became its abbess. She settled with some of the sisters in the Russian part of the Gethsemane Garden near the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, where they managed to establish daily worship and organize monastic life.

A school for Orthodox Arab children was organized within the community, which still exists today.

In 1988, in honor of the centenary of the consecration of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, the Gethsemane community was elevated to the rank of a monastery.

Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother of Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, is buried on the church grounds.

The seven-domed single-altar church is built of white-gray Jerusalem stone and is an example of Russian architecture in the Moscow style. The church has a small bell tower. The iconostasis is made of white marble with bronze ornamentation, and the floor is made of multicolored marble. The icons for the iconostasis were painted by artists Sergey Ivanov and Vasily Vereshchagin. The altar arch features the famous depiction of "Mary Magdalene before the Roman Emperor Tiberius" by Sergey Ivanov. In addition to Vereshchagin and Ivanov, the painting work was done by Alexey Korzukhin, Alexander Sokolov, and Yevgraf Sorokin.