Zhanna Afanasieva was born in St Petersburg. In 2004 she graduated from the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire (class of Svetlana Gorenkova).
From 2004 to 2008, she was a soloist with the Zazerkalye State Children’s Musical Theatre.
From 2005, she was a guest soloist with the Tatar Academic State Musa Jalil Theatre of Opera and Ballet (Tatarstan).
From 2008 – 2011 she was a soloist with the St Petersburg Chamber Opera Company.
At the Mariinsky Theatre she has performed the role of Katerina Ivanovna (The Brothers Karamazov), Giulietta (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) and Emilia Marty (The Makropulos Affair).

Zhanna Afanasieva has toured to Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland among other countries. With the Tatar Opera and Ballet Theatre she has toured to the Netherlands. In 2012 she appeared as Emilia Marty (The Makropulos Affair) at the Staatstheater Nürnberg and at the Leoš Janáček Festival in Brno.