In 1820, she went to live with her sister Eliza in Boston and began receiving lessons and painting miniature portraits. She earned enough from commissions to support herself and her family for several decades. She eventually specialized in miniatures painted on ivory, getting lessons from a Hartford miniaturist, almost certainly Elkanah Tisdale. Her paintings were exhibited in Boston and Washington D.C.. After her eyesight failed in 1851, she retired from painting and settled in Reading, Massachusetts.

Goodridge became well known for her portraits of politician Daniel Webster and fellow-artist Gilbert Stuart. Among Goodridge’s works is a miniature portrait of her own bared breasts, entitled Beauty Revealed, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was the inspiration for a miniature painted by the fictional heroine of Blindspot: A Novel (New York, 2008), by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore. Executed in 1828, it was presented by the artist to her close friend, correspondent, and occasional subject, Daniel Webster. The work was included in the retrospective, “The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.”