Ružica Drechsler-Bižić was born in Bosanska Dubica in 1921. She graduated in 1950 from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade having read archaeology.
As a scholar of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (at the recommendation of Dr Alojzije Benac) she spent one year working in the Regional Museum in Sarajevo (1951) and from 1952 until the end of the career she worked in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb.
As a young archaeologist, she went on field trips with Dr Ksenija Vinski to Vukovar, to the finding site Lijeva bara. Her key research and finds were related to Lika, where she worked in the field walking of the area of Kompolje, Prozor and Smiljan. Her most valuable find was an amber necklace in the form of archaic female heads, in grave 47 in Kompolje, the first confirmation of the links with the Etruscans and Greeks in the area of Lika. She published some 40 scholarly papers. She devised and created a number of domestic and international exhibitions. She elaborated a new display for the Prehistory Department of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. Her best known works relate to the Iapod people: Results of Research into a Iapod Necropolis in Kompolje; Two Interesting Finds from the Iapod Necropolis in Prozor; Settlements and Graves of the Prehistoric Iapods in Vrebac. She published her first works in the Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja in Sarajevo, and then in the Vjesnik Arheološkog Muzeja in Zagreb and in Arheološki radovi i rasrave JAZU. She founded the archaeological departments of the Museum of Lika in Gospić, and the Museum of Gacka in Otočac.

NB. Data taken from the questionnaire, material taken from the Personnel Archives of the MDC, and from an interview recorded on April 12 2002.