Parlichev studied in a Greek school in Ohrid. In the 1850s he worked as a teacher of Greek in the towns of Tirana, Prilep and Ohrid. In 1858 Parlichev started studying medicine in Athens but transferred to the Faculty of Linguistics in 1860. The same year he took part in the annual poetic competition in Athens winning first prize for his poem “O Armatolos” (Ο Αρματωλός, in Bulgarian “The Serdar”), written in Greek. Acclaimed as “second Homer”, he was offered scholarships to the universities at Oxford and Berlin. At that time he was pretending to be a Greek, but the public opinion in Athens emphasized his non-Greek origin. Disappointed Parlichev declined offered scholarships and returned to Ohrid in the next year.

In 1862 Parlichev joined the struggle for independent Bulgarian church and schools, though he continued to teach Greek. After spending some time in Constantinople in 1868 acquainting himself with Church Slavonic literature, he returned to Ohrid where he advocated the substitution of Greek with Bulgarian in the town’s schools and churches. The same year Parlichev was arrested and spent several months in an Ottoman jail after a complaint was sent by the Greek bishop of Ohrid. At that time he began to study of standard Bulgarian, or, as he called it himself, the Slavonic language. From this time until his death Parlichev continued writing only in Bulgarian.

From 1869 Parlichev taught Bulgarian in several towns across Ottoman Empire, including Struga, Gabrovo, Bitola, Ohrid and Thessaloniki. He initiated the creation of the Bulgarian Men’s High School of Thessaloniki. In 1870 Parlichev translated his award-winning poem “The Serdar” into Bulgarian in an attempt to popularize his earlier works, which were written in Greek, among the Bulgarian audience. He also wrote another poem “Skenderbeg”. Parlichev was the first Bulgarian translator of Homer’s Iliad in 1871, though critics were highly critical of his language. Parlichev used a specific mixture of Church Slavonic and his native Ohrid dialect. He is therefore also regarded as a founding figure of the literature of the later standardized Macedonian language. In 1883 Parlichev moved to Thessaloniki, where he taught at the Thessaloniki Bulgarian Male High School (1883-1889). In the period April 16, 1884 – May 1, 1885 he wrote his autobiography. After his retirement in 1890, he returned to Ohrid, where he died on January 25, 1893.