Ute Baumbach was born in 1938 and completed her architecture studies at the TU Dresden in 1964. During her studies she met her future husband Peter Baumbach, who as an architect made significant contributions to the redesign of Rostock in the following decades. After graduating, Ute and Peter Baumbach moved to Rostock, where she worked in the housing construction combine (WBK Rostock) from 1968. In 1978 she completed her doctorate at the TU Dresden.

Her work focuses not only on housing construction within the combine, but also on her involvement in the Kaulsdorf Nord I residential area (1981-1983) in Berlin. Here she also worked with Iris Dullin-Grund and with Traude Kadzioch; together they won the Architecture Prize of the City of Berlin for the first phase of the project in 1982.

She was also involved in numerous competitions with her husband Peter Baumbach and Robert Waterstraat, for example for the Halle-Neustadt Centre in 1967, in which they won second prize. In this constellation with Waterstraat and her husband, they also took part in the competition for the redevelopment of the centre of Schwerin in 1968. A design for a tourist centre in Tangier, Morocco, was also prepared in 1975 with her husband and two other colleagues.

She also worked as an urban planner and urban analyst. Together with her husband, Ute Baumbach travelled to Ethiopia for three years at the invitation of the government to advise them on urban development issues for the capital Addis Ababa. Afterwards they returned to Rostock.

Together with her husband and the architect Michael Bräuer, she continued to run an office for architecture after the fall of the Berlin Wall until she retired in 2003.