[1] Hansen was one of a number of European-trained jewellers who came to New Zealand in the 1960s and transformed contemporary jewellery in the country, including Tanya Ashken, Kobi Bosshard and Gunter Taemmler.

[1][4] After undertaking a traditional jewellery apprenticeship at Sweeney's Jewellers in Auckland, he held his first solo exhibition at New Vision Gallery in 1960.

He married Gurli Winter in 1965 and they travelled to New Zealand together, and opened their first jewellery business in Glen Eden, Auckland before moving to Nelson in 1968.

[2] In 1975 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council travel grant to work as a guest at the Goldsmiths High School, Copenhagen, and left New Zealand again for two years.

[1] In 2021 Polygon highlighted that, "While the One Ring may be Jens Hansen’s global legacy, evidence of his broader artistic impact on New Zealand art and culture appear throughout the island nation.

'He introduced emerging jewelers and silversmiths to workshop methods and forms of modernism through the Danish lens,' [Justine] Olsen told Polygon.

Some of his notable works include: Peter Jackson's Art Direction team first approached Jens Hansen in March 1999, asking him for a design that would have the power and presence of the fabled ring in J. R. R. Tolkien's story.

To mark the 40th Anniversary of Jens Hansen in Nelson in 2008, specific designs were selected, whose form had endured and defied fashion, but that had not been made for decades.