She was best known for her scholarly editions of sixteenth-century Venetian music incunabula printed by Ottaviano Petrucci.
She continued her studies in France, at the American Conservatory, where she worked with Charles-Marie Widor in organ performance, and Nadia Boulanger in harmony.
She was a professor at North Texas until she retired in 1969, and helped to found the doctoral program in music during her tenure there.
[4] As a scholar, she produced authoritative editions of sixteenth-century Venetian compositions, including the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton[5][6] compiled and edited the publication Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology from 1952 to 1965, translated Bach scholarship from German, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947.
[10] The Helen Hewitt Organ Scholarship Fund at North Texas was named in her memory.