The youngest of five children, Helen (Jo) Samuel attended Creveen School, then Woodlands CEGGS, Adelaide. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Adelaide. In 1936 Samuel won third prize for a play on Colonel Light in the South Australian Centenary competition. Between 1941 and 1945 she was employed by the government War Office and after this worked as Editor of the Children's Pages of the Advertiser and the Sunday Advertiser. She travelled in England and on the continent, then returned to Adelaide where she taught at Adelaide High School and later at Presbyterian Girls' School (Seymour College).

Samuel bought a flat created out of the sale and subdivision of her old school, Creveen, and it was here that she began writing as a career. She wrote several plays for schools (unpublished), and scripts for ABC broadcasts for schools. She wrote two plays for the Longmans Green Boomerang Readers series and wrote the school reader The New Australians (1958).