Educated at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a socially liberal organization that championed individual worth regardless of ethnic background or economic condition and Columbia University, she intended to become a teacher of psychology.

[2] Other students of the[3] school who went on to become notable photographers include Margaret Bourke-White, Anne Brigman, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, and Karl Struss.

Her work was exhibited in various New York galleries, and published in Theatre Arts Monthly, Mentor, Scribner's Magazine, and Survey Graphic.

"[4] Ulmann's early work includes a series of portraits of prominent intellectuals, artists and writers: William Butler Yeats, John Dewey, Max Eastman, Sinclair Lewis, Lewis Mumford, Joseph Wood Krutch, Martha Graham, Anna Pavlova, Paul Robeson, and Lillian Gish.

In 1932 she was contacted by Orie Latham Hatcher, president of the Southern Woman's Educational Alliance, urging her to consider documenting the people of Appalachia for their literature and fundraising, and she accepted the commission.

[7] Also in 1932 Ulmann began her most important series, assembling documentation of Appalachian folk art and crafts for Allen H. Eaton's landmark 1937 book, Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands.

The proof prints were mounted into albums, which were annotated by John Jacob Niles and Allen Eaton, chair of the foundation and another noted folklorist, to indicate names of the sitters and dates of capture.

Additional collections can be found at The University of Kentucky (consisting of 16 original signed portraits, and 186 original silver nitrate prints), the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives (consisting of 5 black and white prints focusing on North Carolina), the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, and the New York Historical Society (primarily of prominent New Yorkers).