South African botanist. Helena Forbes was born in Forfar, Scotland, but grew up in Durban, where her family relocated when she was still young. She joined the Natal Herbarium in 1919. Although hired as a junior assistant in the herbarium, she gradually took over its maintenance as well as its plant identification service and soon became involved in research. Her first published works, all from 1920, were a revision of the genus Cassia for Natal and accounts of the flora of Isipingo and of Malvern District for the South African Journal of Natural History. As an authority on Natal flora, her main contributions were her revisions of the genera Psoralea, published in 1930, and of Tephrosia, published on 1951. In 1936 she went to England to serve for 18 months as South African liaison officer at Kew, and on her return worked for a period at the National Herbarium in Pretoria. She rejoined Natal Herbarium as curator in 1941. By 1955, however, she was no longer able to work through the rheumatoid arthritis that she had been ill with for some time; she died four years after taking early retirement. During her 36 years of service, she contributed more than 1,400 specimens to the herbarium's collection, which she mainly collected in Natal.

Sources:
B.D. Schrire, "Centenary of the Natal Herbarium, Durban, 1882-1982", Bothalia, 14(2): 223-236.