He married Margrethe at the Holmen Church on 10 June 1967 and became her prince consort when she succeeded her father, King Frederik IX, as monarch of Denmark on 14 January 1972.

Henrik spent his first five years in Hanoi in Tonkin in French Indochina (now part of Vietnam), where his father looked after family business interests.

[8] He returned to Hanoi in Tonkin in 1950, where increasing unrest forced him to fight the Việt Minh, to protect his family's lands.

[8] Originally wanting to study to become a pianist at Conservatoire de Paris, he instead chose an education more in line with his father's wishes.

[10] Between 1952 and 1957 he simultaneously studied law and political science at the Sorbonne, Paris, and Chinese and Vietnamese at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales (now known as INALCO).

[10] On 10 June 1967 which was the day before his 33rd birthday, he married Princess Margrethe, the heir presumptive to the Danish throne, at the Naval Church of Copenhagen.

The cause of his departure from Denmark was a New Year's Day reception in which his son, Crown Prince Frederik, had been appointed as host in the absence of Queen Margrethe.

The Prince Consort spent three weeks in Caix, and did not appear with his wife as expected at the wedding of Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Máxima Zorreguieta.

On 30 April 2008, shortly before the wedding of his younger son, Prince Joachim, to Marie Cavallier, the Queen conferred the new Danish title "Count of Monpezat" (Danish: Greve af Monpezat) on both of her sons and made it hereditary for their male-line descendants, both male and female.

"[15] In fact, Henrik had mentioned this possibility as far back as 1996 in his published memoir: "During our generation, the future sovereign will perhaps receive approval to see 'Monpezat' added to the dynastic name of 'Oldenburg-Glücksburg'".

'"[17] In her New Year's speech to the Danish people on 31 December 2015, Queen Margrethe announced that Prince Henrik would slow down and give up most of his official duties beginning on 1 January 2016.

In 2013, he accompanied the pop group Michael Learns to Rock on the piano as they recorded "Echo", a number which was presented to King Rama IX of Thailand.

[21][10] Henrik wrote many poems in his native French, some of which have been published in the collections Chemin faisant (1982), Cantabile (2000), Les escargots de Marie Lanceline (2003), Murmures de vent (2005), Frihjul (Roue-Libre, 2010), Fabula (2011), La part des anges (2013), and Dans mes nuits sereines (2014).

He usually planned the family meals in collaboration with the court chef, always including his own spices on the table, some from his childhood estates in Asia.

In addition to his cookbooks, Henrik often appeared in television programmes showing how he prepared meals in Fredensborg Castle in Denmark or at his French home, the Château de Cayx.

[28] His health however worsened, causing Crown Prince Frederik to cut short his visit to South Korea where he was to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

[29] On 13 February 2018, Prince Henrik was transferred from Rigshospitalet to Fredensborg Palace, where the Danish Royal Court stated he wished to spend the remainder of his life.

[32] Henrik's casket was placed in The Palace Chapel at Christiansborg for a castrum doloris, where in the following two days, more than 19,000[33] people went to pay their respects.

[5] Although Danish law never required that royal spouses be of aristocratic origin, no heir's marriage to a person who lacked male-line descent from royalty or titled nobility had been accepted as dynastic by the sovereign in the course of Denmark's history as a hereditary monarchy, until the marriage of the heir presumptive, Princess Margrethe, in June 1967 to "Count" Henri de Laborde de Monpezat.