Rima Lunin Schultz was born on August 3rd, 1943 in Manhattan and grew up in a politically radical, secular Jewish household in the Bronx and later Peekskill, New York, the child of parents affiliated with the Communist Party during the 1930s. She graduated second in her class from Lakeland High School in 1961 and went on to earn her PhD, writing her dissertation on the political economy of Chicago from 1833 to 1872. In 1986 she published her first book, a history of St. James Episcopal Cathedral, and in 1992 co-authored Episcopal Women. That same period, while a fellow at the Newberry Library's Family and Community History Center, she became involved with the Chicago Area Women's History Council (CAWHC), later renamed the Chicago Women's History Center. In 1989 she was named director of the council's flagship project, Women Building Chicago 1790–1990: A Biographical Dictionary, a role she held until the book's publication in 2001. In December 2001, she was recruited by Peg Strobel, Interim Director of the Jane Addams Hull House Museum at UIC, to direct the museum's digital humanities initiative; she taught herself web development and created the website Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull House and Its Neighborhoods, which launched in 2003, ran until 2018, and was reviewed in the Journal of American History. Rima continues to research and write Chicago women's history, including a forthcoming 2027 book with historian Dan Keating on Florence Scala.