Born in 1950 in Québec, Canada, Helen was educated at McGill University (BSc 1971) and King's College London (PhD 1977 with Maurice Wilkins) before working at CEA Grenoble and the University of Oxford. She then moved to Birkbeck College in 1989, where she became Bernal Professor of Structural Biology Crystallography.

Her research interests are on the operation of macromolecular machines using three-dimensional electron microscopy in the areas of molecular chaperones and assisted protein folding/unfolding, misfolding into amyloid, and protein refolding in membrane pore formation.