[1] Helia Bravo Hollis was born and raised in Mixcoac, located in present-day Mexico City.

Her teachers included Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Sotero Prieto, Erasmo Castellano, Antonio Caso, and botanist Isaac Ochoterena, who influenced Bravo's interest in the biological sciences.

[6] Bravo first worked in the field of zoology in the area of parasitic and free-living protozoa, publishing nine studies between 1921 and 1927 alongside Professor Isaac Ochoterena while still a student.

In the 1950s, she returned to academic life and was a professor of botany at the National School of Biological Sciences of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional.

Bravo made contributions to the area of floriculture, although in the arid regions of eastern Mexico, she focused on the taxonomy of cactaceae.

She organized a collection of live cactaceae and other succulent plants in order to observe their development and evaluate their morphological characteristics.

She co-founded the Mexican Cactus Society (Sociedad Mexicana de Cactología) in 1951 with Carlos Chávez, Dudley Blackburn Gold, Jorge Meyrán, Eizi Matuda, and Hernando Sanchez-Mejorada, and later helped to found the Botanical Gardens at UNAM in 1959, then served as its director in the 1960s.

[5] The Cactus and Succulent Society of America (CSSA) gave her a fellow award in 1941 for "Las Cactaceas de Mexico" and other publications.

The Helia Bravo Hollis Botanical Garden in Puebla, Mexico was named after her and is home to many endangered cactus species.