Olga Ignatovich was born on July 24, 1905, according to some sources in Slutsk (Belarus), according to others - in Lodz (Poland). Olga was the younger sister of the famous Soviet photojournalist and experimental photographer Boris Ignatovich. Boris attracted his other two sisters to photography, but only Olga showed outstanding talent. She came to photography in the early 1930s, worked together with her brother in the newspaper "Bednota" and the magazine "Narpit", and from the mid-1930s worked in the newspaper " Vechernyaya Moskva", a member of the group "October". A little later, Olga becomes a member of the "Ignatovich Brigade" in Soyuzphoto.

According to documents, Olga enlisted for service in the Red Army in November 1941. From the first months of the war she served as a photo correspondent for the Soviet frontline newspaper "Boevoye Znamya" of the 30th Army, transformed in April 1943 into the 10th Guards Army (as part of the Kalinin Front). At the end of 1943 Olga was accepted to the editorial staff of the newspaper "For the Honor of the Motherland" of the newly formed 1st Ukrainian Front. Being a photo correspondent of this newspaper, Olga Ignatovich shot the last two years of the war. Photographs taken by Olga Ignatovich in the Auschwitz death camp became the basis for awarding Lieutenant Olga Ignatovich the Order of the Red Star. The photographs she took in the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps were included in the materials of the Nuremberg trials.

After the war she worked in the APN agency and in the publishing house "Soviet Artist". Olga Ignatovich died on March 21, 1984 in Moscow and is buried in Khimki cemetery.