Petra Heidrich was born in Berlin on November 13, 1940. She studied Indology at the Institute of Indian Studies of the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1959 to 1965 and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin from 1965 to 1973. From 1973 to 1981 she lived with her family in India and was a "bona fide research scholar" at the Department of History of Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta from 1973 to 1975.
Ms. Heidrich completed her doctorate on July 12, 1983 with the distinction "summa cum laude". The topic of her dissertation is "Die Rolle des Landproletariats im unabhängigen Indien" (The Role of the Rural Proletariat in Independent India. From 1976 to 1991, Ms. Heidrich was employed first as a research assistant at the Central Institute of History, and from 1986 at the Institute of General History, Department of Developing Countries, of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin.
Ms. Heidrich began her work as a research associate at the Forschungsschwerpunkt Moderner Orient of the Förderungsgesellschaft wissenschaftliche Neuvorhaben mbH in 1992 and continued it from 1996 to the end of 2000 within the framework of the newly founded Leibniz-Zentrums Moderner Orient (Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V.). Her field of work included the social history of modern India, especially agrarian and peasant issues, the transformation of traditional social structures, and social and religious reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. In her last research project at ZMO, she investigated the role of peasant leaders Swami Sahajanand Saraswati and N.G. Ranga in late colonial India.