Tessa Wooldridge grew up in Melbourne and the central Victorian city of Bendigo. She undertook her secondary education at Methodist Ladies' College, Kew and completed a Bachelor of Arts at the Australian National University and a Graduate Diploma of Education at the then Canberra College of Advanced Education.
Wooldridge worked as a primary school teacher, spent a decade at home with her young children and then returned to tertiary study at the University of Canberra to gain a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Management. In 1994 Wooldridge commenced work as an indexer with the AUSTLIT database at UNSW@ADFA and continued in that role when the database was incorporated into AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway (now AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource).
Wooldridge's tanka have appeared in a range of Australian and international journals and anthologies including Eucalypt, Stylus, Atlas Poetica, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka and Skylark.
In 2012, Wooldridge began studies towards a Master of Arts (Writing) at the University of New England.