She was born in a south-eastern area of Slovenia liberated then by Slovene partisans, which her parents were members of, during World War II.

She is the half-sister of Gregor Tomc, a notable sociologist and punk rock musician, who was born from Helena Puhar's later marriage.

During the JBTZ-trial in 1988, when four Slovenian journalist were arrested by the Yugoslav People's Army and accused of revealing military secrets, she was elected on the board of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, which soon became the biggest civil society platform in Yugoslavia, with more than 100,000 individual members.

The book, the title of which is taken from one of Ivan Cankar's short stories, was a combination of psychohistory and social history, in which she analyzed the condition of children in the Slovene Lands in the 19th century.

It also produced a thorough psychological analyses of the texts of some major Slovene authors of the 19th and early 20th century, such as Josip Jurčič and Prežihov Voranc, and their representation of childhood.

When it was published, it raised a controversy, in which Puhar was accused of portraying the history of Slovene family life in a terrible light.

In 2007, she was one of the authors of the volume "The Forgotten Half" (Pozabljena polovica), a comprehensive overview of notable Slovene women of the 20th century, edited by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The film, entitled "Childhood" (Otroštvo), was produced by the Slovenian National Television Broadcast and aired during prime time in April 2010.