Ellen Hofman-Bang attended Vilhelmine Bang's (1848–1932) Drawing School, and from 1898 to 1902, she studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen under Viggo Johansen (1851–1935). She went on several study trips abroad – for example to Paris in 1906 as a student at Jacques-Émile Blanche's (1861–1942) and Lucien Simon's (1861–1945) painting school and then to Italy, the Middle East, Greece, Norway, Sweden and England. Hoffmann-Bang exhibited regularly at Charlottenborg until 1948. She worked mainly with church decorations and religious motifs in the form of large, often dramatic, paintings.