She was a pioneer within women's education in Finland, a leading reformer and the founder of the first seminary of female teachers (1861).
In 1850, her mother and her aunt Anette Harring (d. 1852) opened a school in her home Blomqvistska skolan, to support the family, which was taken over by Elisabeth Blomqvist after their deaths.
In 1856, she made a study trip to France and Germany, and upon her return in 1858, she reopened the Blomqvistska skolan, now with serious educational ambitions.
At this point, the first state schools for girls had been established in 1844, but there were nu educated female teachers.
She introduced school outings, supported the reform program of more classes and more subjects for girls, which replaced the old education that had been focused on making the students ideal wives; Blomqvist lamented the common view that the only profession open to educated women was that of a teacher and that women were expected to marry and be a wife and mother and nothing else, and when the first woman, Maria Tschetschulin, was accepted with dispensation at a Finnish university in 1870, she supported the reform to give women access to university education and more professions, a goal which was discussed for decades before finally introduced.