After attending school in her native Nazareth and in Lebanon, Ziadeh immigrated with her family to Egypt in 1908, and started publishing her works in French (under the pen name Isis Copia) in 1911. Khalil Gibran entered into a well-known correspondence with her in 1912. A prolific writer, she wrote for Arabic-language newspapers and periodicals, along with publishing poems and books. She held one of the most famous literary salons in the modern Arab world in 1921. After suffering personal losses at the beginning of the 1930s, she returned to Lebanon where her relatives placed her in a psychiatric hospital. However, she was able to get out of it, and left for Cairo, where she later died.