Helen Schou originally started out as a painter and graphical artist, but later turned to the sculpted image as her artistic path. She learned the art of sculpting from Anne Marie Carl Nielsen from 1922 to 1927.
Helen Schou was an accomplished rider, which became important, when she together with Anne Marie Carl Nielsen worked on the rider statue of Christian IX. This led to her continuing down this path. She has thus made many sculptures of horses and other animals. This includes the figurines made for Royal Copenhagen.
She attended the Art Academy, where she continued her development as a sculptor. Her anatomically correct sculptures, where helped by not just her aesthetic interest in horses, but also her participation in dessection of horses at the Agricultural Academy.
Her studies continued abroad in 1929, Paris, 1931, Rome, and 1935, Florence. Furthermore she went to Italy, Morocco, Spain, Greece and Uganda, where she especially focused on the old rider monuments.
Her first exhibition was at Charlottenborg at the spring exhibition of 1927 and she later was invited for the autumn exhibitions in 1937 and 1947.
Her masterpieces are the rider statue of Christian X in Aarhus from 1955 and the Stallion og Jutland in Randers from 1969.
In 1926 she married director Holger Schou and she is the mother of the painter Eva Pontoppidan.
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