Yaroslava Rivnyak was born in Ternopil. She started playing music at the age of six. After six months of studying at a music school in the class of Olga Krakowska, she performed at a reporting concert at the local philharmonic. In 1978, she graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire in the class of Boris Belenkyi (a student of Lev Tseitlin). After returning to Kyiv, she dedicated her life to teaching and trained hundreds of violinists, both soloists and orchestral players, including dozens of international competition winners.
She graduated from the Moscow (now Russian Federation) Central Music School and Conservatory (1978). Since then, she has been a violin teacher at the Mykola Lysenko Specialised Music Boarding School in Kyiv, and since 1995 she has worked at the Kyiv Conservatory (since 2004 she has been an associate professor of the violin department at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy).
She is the founder of her own violin school, whose pupils are laureates of international competitions - Dmytro Tkachenko, Vira Zhuk, Yevhen Kostrytskyi, Orest Smovzh, Taras Yaropud, and others.
