A system of two partial differential equations with fractional diffusion is considered in this study. The system extends the conventional Zakharov system with unknowns being nonlinearly coupled complex- and real-valued functions. The diffusion is understood in the Riesz sense, and suitable initial-boundary conditions are imposed on an open and bounded domain of the real numbers. It is shown that the mass and Higgs’ free energy of the system are conserved. Moreover, the total energy is proven to be dissipated, and that both the free and the total energy are non-negative. As a corollary from the conservation of energy, we find that the solutions of the system are bounded throughout time. Motivated by these properties on the solutions of the system, we propose a numerical model to approximate the fractional Zakharov system via finite-difference approaches. Along with this numerical model for solving the continuous system, discrete analogues for the mass, the Higgs’ free energy and the total energy are we provided. Furthermore, utilizing Browder’s fixed-point theorem, we establish the solubility of the discrete model. It is shown that the discrete total mass and the discrete free energy are conserved, in agreement with the continuous case. The discrete energy functionals (both the discrete free energy and the discrete total energy) are proven to be non-negative functions of the discrete time thoroughly the boundedness of the numerical solutions. Properties of consistency, stability and convergence of the scheme are also studied rigorously. Numerical simulations illustrate some of the anticipated theoretical features of our finite-difference solution procedure.