After attending the gymnasium in Kassel, which he left in the middle grades in 1877, the 15-year-old Heinrich entered the Imperial Navy cadet program.

The prince's success was more of the diplomatic than the military variety; he became the first European potentate ever to be received at the Chinese imperial court.

[citation needed] At the beginning of World War I, Prince Henry was named as Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet.

Although the means provided to him were far inferior to Russia's Baltic Fleet, he succeeded, until the 1917 Revolution, in putting Russian naval forces far on the defensive and hindered them from making attacks on the German coast.

His dying father, German Emperor Frederick III and his mother Empress Victoria were in attendance.

The marriage produced three children: Their sons Waldemar and Heinrich were both hemophiliacs, a disease which they inherited through Irene from the maternal grandmother of both of their parents, Queen Victoria, who was a carrier.

In his honor, the Prinz-Heinrich-Fahrt (Prince Heinrich Tour) was established in 1908, like the earlier Kaiserpreis a precursor to the German Grand Prix.