Active as a draughtsman, painter and lithographer, but perhaps best known as a miniaturist, Henri-Joseph Hesse was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David and the painter and miniaturist Jean-Baptise Isabey. He exhibited intermittently at the Salons between 1808 and 1833, making his debut with a painting of A Young Woman Watching a Sleeping Child. At the Salon of 1810 he showed portraits and a number of miniatures, and won a second-class medal.

Hesse travelled to Germany in 1815, but was back in Paris by the following year, when he is listed as a 'peintre en miniature' and living on the rue Neuve-Sainte-Eustache, in the Almanach de 25.000 adresses de Paris pour l'année 1816. Hesse became known in particular for his miniatures, ...