Helene Katz was born on 20 September 1899 in Lemberg, in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which at the time was administered under the terms of the Third Partition of Poland by Austria-Hungary.

Women who wanted to enter the workforce found openings in the arts including dance, film, photography, and radio studios, as well as in the theater.

[6] After having given her notice, Katz terminated her registration as an Austrian Jew on 20 March 1939[6] and made plans with the assistance of William L. Shirer to leave the country.

[6][5] Back in Vienna, under the Aryanization Laws, Franz Jungwirth, a Nazi bureaucrat, was assigned to liquidate Katz's business.

[7][9] In the interwar period, two-thirds of all photography studios in Vienna, had been run by Jewish women and the collection paid homage to their impact on the city.

[9] Some of Katz's work is preserved in the Vienna Museum in a special collection dedicated to photographers who took pictures of the avant-garde dancers of the interwar era.