She was a faculty member at Tulane University from 1955-1981 where she extensively researched Tinea capitis, “Ringworm of the hair.” She was instrumental in creating the Medical Mycological Society of the Americas and served as the President in 1975.
In 1942, after graduating from the University of Arkansas, she completed a medical technology training at Menorah Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.
Before obtaining a master’s in public health from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 1948, she worked for one year as a diagnostic bacteriologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
She worked on Coccidioides immitis, a fungal pathogen responsible for causing Valley Fever in the southwest United States.
Through her success of mentoring, many of Friedman's students went on to be prominent medical mycologists themselves, such as George Kobayashi, William Cooper, Geoffrey Land, and Thomas G. Mitchell.
Judith Domer, a lifelong colleague of Friedman, said that her military training led to a mentoring style that was sometimes tough on students.
In 1965, a committee composed of Lorraine Friedman, Libero Ajello, Charlotte Champbell, Milton Huppert, Hillel Levine, and Margarita Silva-Hutner met during the Second Coccidioidomycosis Symposium to organize a new Medical Mycology Division.