Irina Parfenova's career started in Moscow, her city of birth, where she completed her music degree with professor Inna Malinina at the renewed Gnesins Russian Academy of Music. After graduation in 1987 the young pianist moved to the Netherlands to continue her studies with Naum Grubert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in The Netherlands.
 
After graduation, performances were given in various places over the globe including in Los Angeles, Paris, Moscow, Budapest and Mossel Bay (South Africa) amongst others. Irina is a dedicated performer of music by Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and other Russian composers. Besides solo concerts, Irina Parfenova is known to be a very dedicated chamber musician, especially working together extensively with singers like Ekaterina Levental, Viktoria Pankratova, Gijs Nijkamp and many others. Since years Irina forms a duo with flutist Suzanne Arends, with whom they recorded an album in 2018 dedicated to the year 1943.
 
Irina was art director and co-founder of Troupe A'dour: a cultural foundation for music, theater and other cultural projects with an emphasis on educational projects and music-theater performances for children en families. In collaboration with director Pieter Scholten Irina has produced many music-theater performances such as Kasjtanka, The Elephant, Schumann tells...,We go to the concert!. 

The goal always being to bring classic literature and classical composers closer to the younger audience of nowadays. Her last production is a music play " The garnet bracelet" in cooperation with director Gerardjan Rijnders en actor  Bartho Braat.