Hella Pick was born in Vienna, Austria, into a middle-class Jewish family.

[1] Pick attended school in the Lake District and learned English.

In Germany she became known for her appearance on the TV shows Internationales Frühschoppen and Presseclub.

Pick was the Arts & Culture Programme Director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent think-tank based in London.

The Guardian News & Media Archive contains an oral history of her time on the paper in the 1960s and 1970s[6] and a written memoir.