She was the daughter of the Elder (administrative title) Fischer of the hatmaker's guild in Norrköping.
Dorothea Hoffman conducted her own business independently from her spouse, despite the fact that she as a married woman who was formally under the guardianship of her husband.
When she was widowed in 1702, she was formally noted as a businesswoman of her own business as well as inheriting the hatmaker's guild privilege and workshop of her late spouse.
Hoffman was the most successful hatmaker in Stockholm: she is listed with a larger staff and more journeyman's than any other of her profession in the capital, and her workshop and business was noted to have been the largest within her trade.
It was still the biggest of its kind in Stockholm in 1719–26, when it was managed by Dorothea Hoffman's daughter-in-law Christina Udd, who, however, dissolved it when she remarried in 1726.