Career
A trained nurse, Helena helped found the Center of Health at the Federal University of Alagoas. She was also involved in the student movements against the military dictatorship. In 1992, Helena was chosen as deputy mayor of Maceió as part of the PT-PSB coalition government.
In 1994, she was elected as a councilwoman in Alagoas and in 1998 was elected to the Federal Senate.
She kept her seat in the Senate as an Independent politician. She was the president of PSOL from 2004 to 2010, in addition to leading the Freedom and Revolution faction of the party.
Helena was PSOL"s candidate for president in the 2006 general elections. She had 6% of the voting, obtaining almost 6.6 million votes.
On October 20, 2010, it was announced by the media that Heloísa had left the presidency of PSOL. The councilwoman and former senator said she decided to departure from the national presidency of the party because of its support to Workers" Party presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff during the second round of the 2010 election.
At the same election, Helena unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Senate for Alagoas. Despite leading the polls for a considerable amount of time, she got 417,636 votes (166% of the total), finishing the race in third, behind Benedito de Lira and Renan Calheiros.