Zarifa Ismayil gizi Budagova was born on April 28, 1929 in the Demirbulag neighborhood of Iravan. She entered the Iravan Pedagogical School in 1942 after graduating from the seven grade high school in her native Iravan. After finishing school in 1946, she continued her studies at the Faculty of Philology of the Azerbaijani branch of Iravan Pedagogical Institute. Due to the deportation of Azerbaijanis living in Armenia in December 1947, that faculty was transferred from Iravan to Baku. In 1949, Zarifa Budagova, after graduating from the Faculty of Philology of that institute, entered the post-graduate course of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR.

In 1953, Ms. Zarifa successfully defended her candidate’s thesis in Moscow and was the first among Azerbaijani female linguists to receive the scientific title of candidate in philological sciences. The 24-year-old Azerbaijani girl returned to Baku as a scientist and continued her scientific activities.

Since October 1955, Z.Budagova started to head the Department of Modern Azerbaijani Linguistics of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences and was the head of this department for 35 years – until the end of her life (1989).

In 1963 – 10 years after the candidate’s dissertation, Z.Budagova defended her doctoral dissertation on “Simple sentence in modern Azerbaijani literary language”. However, after the dissertation was submitted to the Higher Attestation Commission of the USSR, it took exactly two years for its approval.

Z.Budagova was awarded the title of professor in 1963. She was one of the editors of the two-volume “Grammar of the Azerbaijani language” book published in 1960–1961. The works “Stylistics of Azerbaijani Artistic Language” (1970), “Simple Sentences in Modern Azerbaijani Language” (1964), “Punctuation Marks in Azerbaijani Language” (1977) were written by Zarifa Budagova.

In 1980, Z.Budagova was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR.

Mrs. Zarifa has always held high positions. She was the head of the department for many years, was the deputy director of the Institute of Linguistics, and finally in 1987 she was elected the director of the institute and worked in this position until the end of her life.

Z.Budagova died on November 9, 1989.

Z.Budagova was the wife of the outstanding scientist Budag Budagov.