Helena Christensen

Helena Christensen is a Danish supermodel and photographer whose three-decade career has made her one of the most-iconic European supermodels of the 1990s. She was born Helena Christensen on December 25, 1968, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her father is Danish, and her mother is Peruvian. She started modeling in her late teens and was crowned Miss Denmark in 1986, going on to represent Denmark at the 1986 Miss Universe pageant in Panama City.

Her break came in 1990 with the Chris Isaak music video for "Wicked Game" — the Hawaii-shot black-and-white music video directed by Herb Ritts, in which Christensen and Isaak were paired on a remote Hawaiian beach. The video's continuous MTV rotation through the early 1990s and the song's peak at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 made Christensen one of the most-iconic American model-recognition figures of the early 1990s.

The 1990s Christensen modeling work spanned the Vogue covers (American, French, British, Italian, German, and Spanish editions, repeatedly through the 1990s), the Versace, Chanel, Gucci, Calvin Klein, and Dior advertising campaigns, the 1991–2000 Victoria's Secret runway shows, and the 1990 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She was among the "Original Supermodels" group of the 1990s alongside Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, and Claudia Schiffer.

She has pivoted toward photography since the late 1990s, founding the Nylon magazine in 1999 (with Marvin Scott Jarrett) and expanding her photography portfolio across landscape, portrait, and fashion-photography work. Her photographs have been exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art. She has continued to model selectively into her fifties and has been a substantial advocate for body-diversity in fashion modeling.

Her name Helena is from the Latinate elaborated form of Helen (from the Greek Helénē). Helena has been continuously among the most-popular American girls' names for decades.