Elsa was the daughter of Maximilian and Anna née Meyer, an older brother was the ornithologist Oscar Neumann while a sister Alice was a sculptor.

Since women in Prussia were prohibited from pursuing regular university studies at that time, Neumann had to obtain permission from each professor to attend their lectures.

Her work Über die Polarisationskapazität umkehrbarer Elektroden ("On the polarization capacity of reversible electrodes") was published in the prestigious journal Annalen der Physik in 1899.

Due to poor job prospects in academic institutions for women with PhD degrees, Neumann became a private scholar and conducted her research at the chemical laboratory of Arthur Rosenheim (1865-1942) and Richard Joseph Meyer (1865-1939) in Berlin.

She was the founder, the first chairwoman, and later an honorary member of the Verein zur Gewährung zinsfreier Darlehen an studierende Frauen ("Association for granting interest-free loans to women students"), which was founded on 26 April 1900.