Painter, printmaker, and art lecturer, Rose R. Schaffer was born in Newark, New Jersey on 20 September 1908. She was enrolled at the Art Students’ League from 1935 to 1940, where she studied painting under George Bridgeman and Ivan Oninsky, and printmaking under Antonio Frasconi and Seong Moy. Other teachers were Bernard Karfiol, Morris Davidson, Jerry Fransworth, and Sol Wilson.

Schaffer’s work was exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Delgado Museum in New Orleans, the National Academy of Design in New York, the Philadelphia Print Club, and the Provincetown Art Association. She was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, the American Color Print Society, the Summit Art Association, the New Jersey Sculptors and Painters Society, and the Artists Equity Association. According to Schaffer, her work was circulated throughout the United States by the American Federation of Artists, the Library of Congress, the New York Coliseum, and Art at Mid Century.

Schaffer served as a board member on the Newark section of the Bureau of Services to the Foreign Born, National Council of Jewish Women.

Rose R. Shaffer died in New Jersey on 16 February 1989.