Princess Maria Klavdievna Tenisheva, née Pyatkowskaya, was a Russian noblewoman, public figure, enamel artist, educator, patron, and collector. She founded an art studio in St. Petersburg, a Drawing School and Museum of Russian Antiquities in Smolensk, a vocational school in Bezhitsa, as well as art and industrial workshops in her estate Talashkino. Tenisheva was a representative of Russian cultural nationalism.

Maria Klavdievna was born on May 20, 1858, in St. Petersburg. In 1869, she entered the Maria Speshneva Gymnasium, where the curriculum followed that of male real schools. She became passionate about studying foreign languages, domestic history, and natural sciences. She married early to Rafael Nikolaevich Nikolaev, and they had a daughter, Maria. However, the marriage did not work out, and soon Maria Klavdievna sold some furniture to afford to move to Paris with her daughter to study singing with Mathilde Marchesi. She discovered she had an excellent mezzo-soprano voice. In Paris, she met Ivan Turgenev, Konstantin Makovsky, who painted her portrait, and Anton Rubinstein. In 1885, Maria and Rafael divorced, and their daughter was sent to a closed boarding school. Later, the daughter distanced herself from her mother, not understanding her desire for creative self-realization. In 1892, Maria Klavdievna married Prince Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Tenishev, a prominent Russian industrialist. Her husband's relatives did not recognize her and did not include her in the genealogy of the Tenishev princes. The couple settled near the Bezhitsa factory in the estate Khotylyovo.

Maria had exquisite artistic taste and a love for art. She collected watercolors and was acquainted with artists such as Vasnetsov, Vrubel, Rerikh, Malyutin, Benois, sculptor Trubetskoy, and many others. Her true passion was Russian antiquities, and the collection she gathered made an indelible impression at an exhibition in Paris. This collection became the foundation of the "Museum of Russian Antiquities" in Smolensk. In 1911, she was awarded the title of honorary citizen of Smolensk.

One of Tenisheva's main educational projects was Talashkino, the ancestral estate of Princess Ekaterina Konstantinovna Svyatopolchertinskaya, which the Tenishevs acquired in 1893. They left the management of affairs in the hands of the former owner. Friends since childhood, Tenisheva and Svyatopolchertinskaya implemented in Talashkino the concept of an "ideological estate," a center for enlightenment and the revival of traditional folk artistic culture, as well as agricultural development. In 1894, the couple acquired the nearby village of Flyonovo and opened an agricultural school with excellent teachers and a rich library. The use of advanced agricultural science allowed the school to prepare effective farmers needed for Stolypin's reforms. The princess paid great attention to the creation of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Flyonovo. She was deeply patriotic and passionate about the Russian national idea.

During World War I, Maria Klavdievna helped supply the front, particularly by growing and delivering cabbage in 1916. The decline of the front and the rear greatly saddened her. During the Russian Civil War, after March 26, 1919, Tenisheva, along with her close friend E. K. Svyatopolchertinskaya, maid Liza, and friend V. A. Lidin, left Russia forever, traveling through Crimea to France. By that time, her husband, Prince V. N. Tenishev, had passed away. The emigration occurred before the evacuation of the Russian army and civilian population under Baron P. N. Wrangel. Her memoirs written in emigration and published in Paris after her death, "Impressions of My Life. Memoirs," cover the period from the late 1860s to New Year's Eve 1917. Princess Tenisheva passed away on April 14, 1928, in the suburb of Paris, La Celle-Saint-Cloud.