[3][6] She is the granddaughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants; her parents, who were piece-workers in the garment industry, attended Lea Bridge Road Synagogue.

Shapiro played banjolele as a child and occasionally sang with her brother Ron in the skiffle group of his youth club.

[3] After Helen's appearance on the ITV music programme Thank Your Lucky Stars, the record took off and reached number three in the UK Singles Chart in May 1961.

[10] According to AllMusic, Shapiro's rich, mature voice made her "an extraordinary new phenomenon on the British pop scene.

The single quickly reached the top of the chart with far greater sales than her last[2] in October 1961, by which time Shapiro had turned 15.

[1] Her final UK Top Ten hit single was with the ballad "Little Miss Lonely", which peaked at number eight for two weeks in 1962.

[3] During the course of the tour, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the song "Misery" for her, but Shapiro's producer, Norrie Paramor, turned it down,[1] and she did not record the composition.

"[citation needed] Shapiro lip-synched her then-current single, "Look Who It Is", on the British television programme Ready Steady Go!

[18][19] On 31 December 1969, Shapiro appeared in the BBC-ZDF co-production, Pop Go the Sixties, singing "Walkin' Back to Happiness".

With the new wave of beat music and newer female singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw, and Lulu, Shapiro appeared old-fashioned and emblematic of the pre-Beatles era of the 1950s.

[1] As her pop career declined, Shapiro turned to cabaret appearances, touring the workingmen's clubs of the north-east of England.

Her final cabaret show took place at Peterlee's Senate Club on 6 May 1972, where she announced she was giving up touring, as she was "travel-weary" and had had enough of "living out of a suitcase".

in London's West End[3] and appeared in a British television soap opera, Albion Market, where she played one of the main characters until it was taken off air in August 1986.