Professor Rahe accepted her appointment in Sweden for once. She had been working there as a professor of industrial design at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg since 2003. Ulrike Rahe graduated from the University of Gothenburg with a Master of Fine Arts in Design in 1989 and subsequently did research at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Technology. This was followed by nine years as Professor of Colour Design at the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Hildesheim and, in 1998, guest professorships at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Madrid/Spain and at the Dept. for Media Communications in Kouvola/Finland. Born in Bremen, she took a detour to the south of Germany to study product design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd.
Together with her husband Detlef Rahe, the married mother of two runs the company rahe design, which they founded in Bremen in 1989.