Princess Helena was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's fifth child and third daughter, born at Buckingham Palace on 25th May 1846, the day after her mother's twenty-seventh birthday.

Sir William Ross was a highly successful miniature painter, appointed Miniature Painter to the Queen in December 1837 and knighted in 1842. Queen Victoria particularly admired Ross's ability to catch a likeness, and in addition to miniatures also commissioned many independent watercolours and drawings of her own children and her relations and their offspring. On his death in 1860, Princess Victoria (known as Vicky) wrote to her mother 'No one will ever paint with such brilliancy and freshness again ... he was such a good kind simple hearted old man ... I shall never forget his funny voice and ways.' (RA Z/9/22/28 January 1860). Later that year Victoria and Albert leant 40 miniatures from their collection by Ross to a retrospective of his work.