Hedy Maxine Ratner was born August 29, 1941 at Michael Reese Hospital on Chicago's South Side, the daughter of immigrants who had fled anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland and Belarus. She grew up in Kenwood and later South Shore, graduating from South Shore High School at 15. After a brief, unhappy stint at the University of Illinois and an early marriage, Ratner moved to California, where she became involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements, earned an AA in sociology from Los Angeles City College, and completed a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's in education at UCLA.

Returning to Chicago in 1968, Ratner taught kindergarten at Bryn Mawr Elementary School in South Shore before earning a graduate degree from the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School and a second graduate degree in educational administration from DePaul University, which led to her appointment as Assistant Superintendent of Cook County Schools. Her involvement with the YWCA — where she was elected board president — drew her deeper into the women's movement; she founded a Chicago chapter of Women in Film and organized for the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1980, President Carter appointed her Assistant Commissioner of Education, where she helped establish the U.S. Department of Education.

Back in Chicago, Ratner built the Mayor's Task Force on Women's Health alongside Sister Sheila Lyne and remained active in reproductive rights advocacy. In the 1980s, she and Carol Dougal co-founded the Women's Business Development Center, dedicated to economically empowering women through entrepreneurship — an organization now marking its 40th anniversary.