Elizabeth Hoffmann was born on Cummeragunja Mission. When she was ten her mother passed away and Hoffmann was then raised by the nurses who worked in the Medical Clinic at the Mission. Hoffmann left school at the age of fourteen to go work at a cannery. By eighteen she was married and for the next seven years she looked after her family.
In 1971, she moved to Melbourne to work as a matron for the Aboriginal Advancement League's (AAL) Gladys Mitchell Youth Hostel. Hoffmann has held the elected positions of President, Vice President and Treasurer for the Aboriginal Advancement Management Committee. In 1976, she was employed as Director of the AAL. Hoffmann's commitment to the improvement of Indigenous Australians has seen her elected as the Chairperson of the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Housing Co-operative. For four years, she was an executive of the National Aboriginal Women's Council. Hoffmann was also on the Aboriginal Housing Board's Steering Committee which elected and all-Indigenous Australian committee.
(Source: Some Aboriginal Women Pathfinders: their difficulties and their achievements, Women's Christian Temperance Union of Australia, [1980], pp 40-44).
