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Helen Khal grew up in a Lebanese family in Pennsylvania. In 1946, she went to live in Lebanon for two years, studying painting at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut, and meeting the artists Shafic Abboud (1926 – 2004) and Yvette Achkar (born in 1928) and the sculptor Michel Basbous (born in 1921). After her marriage to the poet Yusuf al-Khal, she continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York, but it was not until 1960 that she had her first exhibition, at the Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut. Her style became increasingly expressionist and emotional following the deaths of her mother and brother. In 1963, she co-founded Gallery One, the first gallery of its kind not only in Lebanon but in the whole of the eastern Arab region. When she and her husband divorced six months later, he was awarded custody of their children and ownership of the gallery. She became a teacher at the American University of Beirut and art critic for the Daily Star and Monday Morning.