Helen Khal began painting at the age of 21. Initially, she had planned on becoming a writer as she was an avid reader and passionate about literature. However, her plans changed after spending six months in a sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis at the age of 22. During her recovery, Khal took on drawing and painting, then enrolled at weekly afternoon art classes at the Baum Art School in her hometown.

In 1946, Khal travelled back to Lebanon for the first time, and began her studies at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. She developed a unique painting style and became well-known for her ability to use color in an emotive way; meditative, colorful abstractions arguably reflect her signature style of geometrical forms such as circles, rectangles and squares. Her abstract canvases are composed of several basic motifs or combinations of them: horizontal bars, circles, rectangles or squares, vertical accumulations of rectangles, or free-floating oval shapes that move diagonally across the surface. In focusing on these variations, she intends no actual representation or symbolism; she uses color to elicit a subjective response that moves the viewer’s vision beyond the canvas and creates a personal alternate world. In 1949, she moved to New York to continue her studies at the Art Students League and in 1963, came back to Beirut to establish and direct Lebanon’s first permanent art gallery, Gallery One.