Zoya Konstantinovna Gizhytska studied at the Women's High School in Kiev, then at Kiev State University. For some time she worked at the Botanic Garden of Kiev State University, then began her postgraduate study at the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Academician Fomin, an outstanding botanist, was her supervisor. Following Fomin's advice, she began to study of fungi of the University Botanic Garden and some other parks and gardens of Kiev. Using these specimens, collected during the autumn of 1925 and spring and summer of 1926, she published the first list of fungi recorded from plants of the University Botanic Garden. The list included 256 species, dominated by conidial fungi (79 coelomycete species and 29 hyphomycete species) and rust fungi (28 species of Uredinales). The list was published in 1926 in Bulletin of Kiev Botanic Garden. During her surveys of the University Botanic Garden and other parks and gardens of Kiev, she found a number of new taxa including a new genus of conidial fungi typified by a new species (Fominia rubi-idaei on Rubus idaeus), new species of conidial fungi in the genera Diplodia, Monochaetia, Phyllosticta and Robillarda, new ascomycete species in the genus Leptosphaeria, and various new varieties and forms. All of these were published in the Bulletin of Kiev Botanic Garden in 1927 and 1928.

As a topic for her candidate degree thesis, Fomin suggested discomycetes of the area around Kiev so, in 1928 she began to collect these fungi mainly in mixed forests near the suburban villages as Pushcha Voditsa, Irpen' and Holoseev, and in the coniferous forests of Sviatoshin. Altogether she amassed more than 2,000 specimens of discomycetes. To identify them, she went to Leningrad [St Petersburg], where she processed her material in the laboratory of Prof. A.A. Yachevsky with his personal assistance. Such famous Russian mycologists as V.A. Tranzschel and N.A. Naumov also helped her. To each of them Z.K. Gizhytska expressed her gratitude in her paper, devoted to discomycetes of Ukraine, which was published in 1929 in Bulletin of Kiev Botanic Garden. The paper contained a list of 152 species, including the new genus Muscia, typified by M. catharineae Gizhitsk, a parasite on the moss-like plant genus Catharinea. In the same year in Results in Mycology & Plant Pathology she presented a detailed diagnosis of the new genus and described 3 new pyrenomycete species collected in Kiev Botanic Garden. Two of these new species were found in the greenhouses (Anthostomella livistonia on the palm Livistona chinensis and Nectriella jaczewskii on seedlings of the palm Sabal blacksburtiana). The third (Heteropatella graminis) was collected on dry grass.

Although workings mainly with discomycetes during her postgraduate study, Z.K. Gizhytska also collected fungi of other groups around Kiev. In total, she identified 1,072 species, including 484 conidial fungi, 294 ascomycetes, and 280 basidiomycetes. However in 1929 only part of this extended list was published (353 species). In processing such large quantity of material, she discovered and described some new taxa. Apart from the discomycete genus already mentioned, these included 5 species, 3 varieties and 6 forms. Descriptions of some of these (new species of the genera Pedilospora, Triposporium, Septoria and Speira) were published in Bulletin of Kiev Botanic Garden in 1933.

After finishing postgraduate study she worked as a scientist in the Department of Cryptogamic Plants of the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany, and later headed the new Laboratory of Mycology in the same Institute. In the 1930s the direction of her research changed from inventories to applied. At that time the Institute's Laboratory of Mycology was given the objective of investigating the ecological and biological characteristics of Merulius lacrymans. This wood-decay fungus was damaging Kiev's wooden buildings which in those days were numerous. The aim was to develop means of control. Gizhytska found that growth of spores of this fungi depended on the pH of the nutrient medium, and looked at the behaviour of the fungus in different environments, including a range of temperatures from -75° C to 100° C.

Later, she began to study soil fungi. On the instructions of Academician Kholodny using special chambers developed by him, and by inoculating soil on agar media, she recorded fungi of soil from Holoseevsky Forest (an area near Kiev), defining the fungal species composition, identifying dominant species, and noting seasonal changes. She went on to study the same aspects of soil fungi from fields of Kiev suburban state farms and collective farms under different crops (potatoes, beet etc.), and ascertained that different fertilizers influenced which fungi were present. This talented mycologist and expert on species diversity of Ukrainian fungi died at the early age of 40. The title of her last publication, which appeared after her death in 1936, was On the Influence of Different Fertilizers on the Soil Mycoflora.

Kirk & Ansell form of name: Gizhitsk.