Moritz Rothberger began an apprenticeship as a tailor at his father Jacob Rothberger's textile company located on Stephansplatz in Vienna in 1885. After his father's death in 1899, Moritz took over the company together with his brothers Alfred (1873–1932) and Heinrich. From the mid-1910s, he lived with his wife Karolina, née Huberth, (1870–1921) in an apartment at Margaretenstraße 30 in Vienna's 4th district. Two rooms of the apartment housed his collection, which included contemporary paintings and sculptures on the one hand, and prehistoric and Roman archaeological finds on the other. Rothberger also maintained a studio on the ground floor for his work as a sculptor. In 1929, he became an associate member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus.

After Austria's annexation to Nazi Germany in March 1938, the members of the Rothberger family were directly affected by the persecution of the Nazi regime. The mandatory Declaration of Assets of Jews of 26 April 1938 formed the basis for the continued expropriation of all the Rothberger family's assets. From the end of June 1938, the Jacob Rothberger family business was placed under provisional administration. In the following months, Wilhelm Bührer took over the company and “Aryanized” it. Moritz and Heinrich Rothberger had to relinquish their business shares and take on debts of approximately RM 95,000. Furthermore, Rothberger was forced to sell parts of his movable and immovable property from 1938/39 onwards. He delivered 177 lots of prehistoric antiquities, antique bronzes, ceramics and glassware to the Berlin based auction house Hans W. Lange for auction on 7 and 8 February 1939. In October 1938, he had applied to the Central Monument Protection Office (Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz) for an export license for these items. Three objects, two glasses and a bronze sword, were not authorised for export and were given as “donations” to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna. According to the auction results published in the magazine Die Weltkunst, Hans W. Lange sold 81 of the 177 items for RM 18,405 in February 1939. It is unclear what happened to the proceeds. Rothberger had to hand over other valuables, including precious metals, to the Dorotheum on the basis of the “Dritten Anordnung auf Grund der Verordnung über die Anmeldung des Vermögens von Juden” (Third Order on the basis of the Regulation on the Declaration of Assets of Jews) of 21 February 1939. In October or November 1939, he sold his villa in Baden, which had previously served as his summer residence. On 17 October 1940, Moritz Rothberger gifted most of his remaining property to his niece Bertha Rothberger (1928–2018), who was still a minor and classified as a "first-degree Mischling " and his long-time housekeeper Sofie Podsednik (1892–1987), whom he named as his sole heir in his will in 1943. From the beginning of January 1942, Moritz Rothberger was registered at the hospital of the Jewish community, the Rothschild Hospital, at Währinger Gürtel 97, which was relocated to Malzgasse 16 in Leopoldstadt, Vienna’s 2nd district, in November 1942. Moritz Rothberger died there at the age of 79 on 20 September 1944. It remains unclear how he managed to avoid deportation.

Sofie Podsednik regained ownership of the villa in 1954. The whereabouts of most of the objects offered for sale at Hans W. Lange in 1939 remain unclear. On 20 November 2003, the Art Restitution Advisory Board (Kunstrückgabebeirat) recommended the restitution of the two Syrian glasses and the bronze sword, which had been transferred as donations to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum in 1938 in connection with the export licence, to the legal successors of Moritz Rothberger. The return took place in 2008. In addition, in 2022, the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg restituted a Bronze Age sword, which had been purchased by the SS at the auction in question, to the heirs of Moritz Rothberger.