Exact information about the founding time of the Rzhyshev Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery is absent. It is known that it was destroyed during the Tatar invasion, but by the 15th century, it was already functioning as a male monastery.

In the 15th-16th centuries, the Rzhyshev Preobrazhensky Monastery was mentioned alongside the well-known Kyiv monasteries founded during the era of the Baptism of Rus.

In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Crimean Tatars raided Kyiv region, leading to the devastation and destruction of the monastery, which remained empty for a long time.

In 1649, the Voronich family, owners of Rzhyshev and its surroundings, confirmed the monastery's possessions, including the village of Baliky with its lands, fields, forests, meadows, and apiaries. The 1649 charter mentions that the ancestors of the Voronich family were the founders of the monastery.

During the Ruin, the monastery was once again ravaged. Metropolitan Gideon-Svyatopolk Chetvertynsky, Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and Hetman Ivan Skoropadsky supported its revival, confirming its possessions.

After the return of Kyiv region to the Poles, the monastery faced many difficulties. The Voronich family, having converted to Catholicism, established a Catholic monastery in Rzhyshev in the 18th century, taking all the possessions from the Orthodox Preobrazhensky Monastery, which led to its decline.

In the 19th century, the Rzhyshev Preobrazhensky Monastery was the poorest in the Kyiv diocese. In 1852, it became a female monastery thanks to the first abbess Yulia Yanokhtoviy, who donated all her property for its arrangement, contributing to the revival of the monastery.

In the 1920s, the monastery was devastated, although, according to local residents' memories, nuns and novices lived there even in the 1930s. The last document of the monastery, dated 1924, contains a list of accepted novices.

Initially, the monastery had one church in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord. In the 18th century, the church was so poor that it had a straw roof. A new church was built thanks to the efforts of the benefactor Simeon Golovinsky.

During her journey along the Dnieper, Empress Catherine II visited the monastery and donated 50 gold coins. With these funds, Abbot Gervasiy began the construction of a church in honor of the holy great martyrs Barbara and Catherine on September 2, 1787, which was consecrated on November 24, 1788.

Around 1910, a house church in honor of All Saints was built near the abbess's quarters.

Before the closure of the male monastery, there were about 30 monks. In the female monastery under Abbess Yulia, there were 60 residents, and in 1908, there were 70 nuns and 213 novices.

Under Abbess Yulia, a strict order of monastic life was established, which was maintained until the destruction of the monastery during the Soviet era.

Until 1917, the monastery owned 34 desyatinas of arable land and forest plots.

Located in a picturesque hilly area above the Dnieper, in the early 20th century, the monastery attracted many pilgrims, especially from Kyiv, who visited it on weekends.

In 1995, the monastery was revived, although only a few miraculously preserved icons, a fragment of the refectory, and the monastery administration remained.