Her parents were Polish nationalists, impoverished by their investments towards independence from Russia, especially the January Uprising of 1863-65, and the family lived in straitened circumstances.

She was socially active, and in her youth, she belonged to the underground organization 'Kolo Kobiet Korony i Litwy, whose goal was to educate young workers and raise funds for political support.

[4] As tertiary education became restricted under Russian rule, especially for women, Helena and her sisters had to attend the Flying University, a clandestine organisation for higher studies, in Warsaw.

[6] By 1894, Marie had graduated from the Sorbonne and was considering a return to Poland; she was interested in joining the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Anticipating this, Helena, who was a private tutor for the Bujwid family, who moved to Kraków in 1893, wrote to the Faculty of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, asking if she could attend lectures in anorganic chemistry and experimental physics.

[9] She established and operated several primary schools in the 1920s and 1930s, concentrating on systematic learning and preparing the students for secondary gymnasiums.

[4] Helena, along with her siblings Bronisława and Josef, had collected papers, letters and other archival material in connection with their sister Marie, and stored them at the Radium Institute in Warsaw.