Dr Esther Breitenbach graduated in Philosophy and Political Science from Dundee University in 1974, and subsequently worked in adult and community education, before commencing a career in academic research and teaching in 1991. Dr Breitenbach was seconded from the Department of Social Policy, University of Edinburgh, to the Scottish Office (later Scottish Executive) as Women's Issues Research Consultant, from 1998 to early 2001, and to the Women and Equality Unit in the Cabinet Office (later in the Department of Trade and Industry), as a Senior Research Officer, from early 2001 to early 2003. She was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Governance, Public Policy and Social Research, Queen’s University Belfast, from 2003 to 2005. In 2005 she obtained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow, Teaching Associate, and Research Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. Since 2011, she has been Honorary Fellow in the School.

She was a member of a range of groups in the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, including as a co-founder and collective member of the ‘Scottish Women’s Liberation Journal’ and ‘MSprint’. She later participated in the 1990s campaign for a Scottish Parliament and for better representation of women in Scottish political and public life. Much of her work relating to the women's movement in Scotland and women's participation in the campaign for a Scottish parliament was carried out in collaboration with Alice Brown and Fiona Mackay.

She has had a long-standing involvement with Women's History Scotland, of which she was a founder member, and was a contributor to 'The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland, 1867-1928', the online learning resource launched in 2018 to commemorate the centenary of women's partial enfranchisement. She was also a participant in the Scottish Magazines Network project at Stirling University in 2021.