Helma Wennemers studied chemistry at the Goethe University Frankfurt, completing her diploma thesis with Gerhard Quinkert [de] in 1993. She earned her PhD at Columbia University, New York in 1996, under the supervision of W. Clark Still, with a thesis «Encoded combinatorial chemistry: a tool for the study of selective intermolecular interactions.» Between 1996 and 1998, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University with Hisashi Yamamoto, before being appointed Bachem Assistant Professor at the University of Basel in 1999. She held this post until 2003, where she was promoted to associate professor. In 2011, she moved to ETH Zurich as a professor of organic chemistry.