Her father is Danish and her mother is Peruvian.
She stepped into the limelight in 1986 by claiming the title of Miss Denmark at age eighteen, and representing her country at the Miss Universe pageant. This provided an invaluable springboard to launch herself as an international model. She left her home soon afterwards to pursue modeling in Paris.
Christensen is considered to be one of the more prominent supermodels of the 1990s. She has appeared on many magazine covers and fashion campaigns. She was in the Victoria's Secret catalog and in their television commercials.
In 1991, she starred in the music video for Chris Isaak's song "Wicked Game". In the video, she is depicted as Isaak's lover. Christensen is topless for much of the video, though her nudity is relatively concealed with clever camera angles. It was decided that full frontal nudity would not be suitable for mainstream release. Viewers still reacted to Christensen's sexually suggestive performance, and the video was later featured on MTV's "Sexiest Video of All-Time".
Business
Christensen has an antiques shop in Manhattan and sells some of her clothes in her mother's Yo-Yo Second Hand Shop in Christianshavn.
Helena co-founded Nylon magazine as the original creative director with American entrepreneur, Mic Neumann. She has launched her own clothing line Christensen & Sigersen, with long-term friend Leif Sigersen. The pair also run Butik, a shop in New York.
Breast cancer advocate
Christensen was in Ireland to launch the second Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign which involves the sale of exclusive designer t-shirts to raise millions for Action Breast Cancer (a project of the Irish Cancer Society) and Europa Donna Ireland to help younger women with breast cancer.
Personal life
Christensen lived with the late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, and has been romantically linked to Leonardo DiCaprio and Billy Corgan. She has one child, son Mingus Luchien Reedus born October 22, 1999 with former model Norman Reedus who she married in 1998. Norman and Helena split in 2003, and divorced in 2004.
Helena has claimed on several occasions to be a cheese addict, admitting that: "There've been times when I've bought a whole pound of cheese and walked down the street and eaten it in one go... I think it's incredibly sensual."
Christensen declares that: "Whenever my head is like a maze, I turn to the easy things in life, the things that mean the most to me: Sex and cheese. These things are connected. Truth be told, I love all cheese: French cheese, Italian cheese, even British cheese, but Danish cheese is the greatest. I get my best nightmares after I eat Danish cheese. Actually I've seriously thought about getting a cheese tattoo. A nice Edam on my shoulder, maybe."
In June 2006, Christensen admitted to smoking cannabis, saying: "I wouldn’t say no if somebody passed me a joint." She claimed that models are attracted to the apparent glamour of Class A narcotics, but she didn't use them, telling Britain's Grazia magazine: "It was never a problem for me. I was brought up with a lot of discipline so I wasn’t attracted to it. But there were a lot of young, beautiful girls on the party scene, with a lot of drugs around. I’m not a saint, but drugs were never my thing."[6]
She drives a Morris Minor car at home in Monaco, and also has apartments in Copenhagen and Manhattan. Christensen is left-handed and is a fan of The Smiths.
