 Petraşcu was born on 31 December 1892 in Chișinău under the name Melania Nicolaevici.She spent her childhood in Nisporeni where she first started sculpting in clay.After attending school in Chișinău, she enrolled as a student at the Moscow State Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts where she studied sculpture under professors Konenkov and Dzyubanov (19071908).