Helen obtained her BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Bath in 1998. She then moved to the University of St Andrews for her PhD, investigating the structural basis of protein hyperthermostability. In 2001, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee for a postdoc in the newly-established lab of Brenda Schulman at St Jude's Children's Research Hospital. It was here that Helen developed her interest in the mechanisms of ubiquitination, solving the structure of the E1 for Nedd8. In 2005, Helen moved to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Laboratories of CRUK’s London Research Institute, to establish her own group.

In late 2013, Helen relocated her lab to the MRC-PPU in Dundee to pursue her research programme in understanding specificity and disease in the ubiquitin system. Helen was a member of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme from 2011 to 2014, and received the Colworth medal from the Biochemical Society in 2015. In 2016 Helen was promoted to Professor in the University of Dundee.