Henning Koppel was born in Copenhagen. In the mid to late 1930s, he trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and then studied sculpture in Paris at the Académie Rançon.
In 1945 he returned to Denmark and started work as a designer for Georg Jensen, where he remained for his whole career. Koppel's abstract and sculptural work, often considered amongst the most original of Jensen's designers, helped propel the firm to the forefront of Modern design after World War II.
He received the Lunning Prize in 1953 and gold medals in 1951, 1954 and 1957 at the Milan Triennales. His work was of organic, sculptural shape and generally without decoration as he felt the shape spoke for itself. He was most interested in form, not function. He once said
