[2] She attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1955 to 1959,[3][4] where she studied with Richard Diebenkorn and Harry Krell.

[5] Her paintings were described as "refreshing in their candor, warm, colorful, exciting with enormous vitality and vibrating with her dominant personality," in the words of one admirer.

[2] "With all her squeezed-from-the-tube, knifed-on impastos, there is discipline in her structure, a balance in the pull of color, of texture, an equilibrium of horizontals, verticals, and receding planes and a constant shift from surface to deep space," commented another reviewer in 1972.

Her first husband was physician Morris Berk; they married in 1939[14] and 1944,[15] had two children, Anne and Steven, and divorced in 1969.

[2] A retrospective exhibit of Berk's work opened at The Hilbert Museum at Chapman University on August 28, 2021, in conjunction with a book on the artist, In Living Color, The Art & Life of Henrietta Berk, developed by Steven Stern and published by Cool Titles.