[1][2] Helena Eldrup was born to the sea captain Gabriel Mollén (d. 1802) and Anna Katarina Remner (d. 1834) and married in Gothenburg in 1821 to sea captain Niels Eldrup (d. 1837), with whom she had a daughter and a son.
She was for a time employed as a teacher at the Societetsskolan in Gothenburg, before being given the position as principal of the Kjellbergska flickskolan in 1835.
She was estimated by the board to have sufficient informal education for the task, in addition to being an intelligent, religious but compassionate woman as a person.
She died in 1872 and was succeeded by Therese Kamph, who expanded and developed the school considerably.
In 1911, 113 former students collected money to commission a portrait of the de facto school founder, Helena Eldrup, made by one of her students, Jenny Nyström.