Ulla Hirschfeld was born in Gleiwitz, Silesia into a scholarly Jewish family.

She took up residence in Berlin soon after her husband's death in 1878, and married Jewish industrialist Louis Wolff in 1880.

[4] Wolff-Frankfurter's first production, Ein Vampyr, appeared in 1876 at the Lobetheater [de] in Breslau, and was well received.

[6] Her publications often explored the tension between tradition and modernity in the Jewish family,[7] and the isolated experiences of ghetto and shtetl life.

[8] As a journalist, she headed the Berlin feature section of the Hamburgischer Correpondent newspaper for over 15 years, and wrote for other newspapers and magazines, especially for the Berliner Tageblatt, the Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and the Breslauer Zeitung.