Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst was born on the 2nd of May 1729 in the Ducal Castle in Stettin, Prussian Pomerania. She was the daughter of Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, and Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp.
Catherine the Great seized power through a coup on the 8th of July 1762 after her husband Peter III alienated the nobility. She arrested Peter III, forced him to sign an abdication document, and was ordained as the sole occupant of the Russian throne by the Semenovsky Barracks clergy on the 17th of July 1762.
Catherine the Great extended the borders of the Russian Empire by some 500,000 square kilometers by absorbing New Russia, Crimea, the North Caucasus, right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland. These expansions occurred mainly at the expense of the Ottoman Empire and the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth through treaties such as the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 and the annexation of Crimea in 1783.
Catherine the Great founded the Hermitage Museum in 1770 to house her collection of paintings, sculpture, and books, and established the Smolny Institute in 1764 as the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe. She also created the Russian Statute of National Education on the 5th of August 1786, which established a two-tier network of high schools and primary schools open to all free classes.
Under Catherine the Great, serfs remained bound to the land they tilled and had very limited rights despite some legal changes allowing them to file complaints against nobles. The 17th of March 1775 manifesto prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again, yet nobles gained the ability to sentence serfs to hard labour in Siberia and imposed stricter rules beginning around 1767.
Catherine the Great died on the 17th of November 1796 after a reign that lasted 34 years. Her death occurred while Russian troops were stationed at the confluence of the Aras and Kura Rivers during a military campaign against Persia, and her son Paul I ordered the troops to retreat immediately after her passing.