Zagout was born in 1984 in Bureij refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip near Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the camp “was built in the 1950s to house refugees who, until then, had lived in British army barracks and tents. The refugees who settled in Bureij mostly came from Palestinian towns east of Gaza, such as Falouja.”

Zagout grew up listening to her family and other elders tell stories about Palestine before the 1948 Nakba where Israeli Occupation Forces displaced 750,000 Palestinians from their land.

During the Nakba, her own family was forcibly expelled from the village of Isdud – which “Israel” renamed to “Tel Ashdod” – and therefore forced to seek refuge in the Gaza Strip.

According to her sister, Maysaa Ghazi, Zagout developed a love of painting from a young age.

Zagout graduated in 2003 from the Gaza Training College, with a diploma in Graphic Design.

She then graduated in 2007 from Al-Aqsa University – the first and oldest public university in Gaza – with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

In her professional life, she became an art teacher at a primary school in the city. She also worked for UNRWA.

Zagout would continue painting in her adult life. It supported her family of six and also allowed her to share Palestinian culture with the world.

Her work has been featured in many exhibitions. One in particular in 2021 was a solo exhibition titled "My Children in Quarantine" looking at life during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the exhibition, she showed images of Palestinians in masks, including herself, in their homes and in Al Quds / Jerusalem.

On October 13, 2023 – just a week into the ongoing genocide – Zagout was martyred by an Israeli air strike in Gaza.

Two of her four children, Adam and Mahmoud, were also martyred in the same attack.

She is survived by her husband and their two other children, Faisal and Baraa.

In addition, Zagout is survived by her sister, Maysaa – who is also a painter and educator – and other extended family.

Since then, the arts collective @themuseummuseum connected with her surviving family and has held several exhibitions in New York City to showcase the work of both Heba and Maysaa, sell prints, and raise money for their family. All of the original canvases were destroyed in the air strike, so scans have been used to for the prints.

Site note: Please consider donating to Maysaa Zagout’s GoFundMe, which is actively collecting donations at the time of this page’s publication. You can also buy prints here to support.

Laura Albast, a Palestinian-American journalist, spoke to Zagout just two days before she was martyred.

She described Zagout’s art "as very connected to her experience as Palestinian woman living in Gaza" and "a great loss."

"They didn't just bomb her home, her children, but they erased the traces of her creativity,” said Albast. "This is a woman who has brought so much joy to the homes of so many people who have bought her art, who have displayed her art.”

Two weeks before the Israeli airstrike, Zagout posted a video on YouTube about her work at the end of September 2023. In the video, she said: “I consider art a message that I deliver to the outside world through my expression of the Palestinian cause and Palestinian identity.”