Yixian Zheng received a B.S. in Biology from Sichuan University, Sichuan, China, and a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at The Ohio State University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Francisco and joined Carnegie as a staff member in 1996. Between 2000 and 2012 she was also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

She was named Director of Carnegie Embryology in 2017. With Observatories Director John Mulchaey, she served as Interim Co-President of the institution for the first half of 2018.