HELEN FORESMAN SPENCER, 1902-1982, was born in Joplin, Missouri, graduated from high school in Pittsburg, Kansas, and studied at KU. She and her husband, Kenneth Aldred Spencer, lived in Pittsburg (they had been high school and university sweethearts) until 1940 when they moved to Kansas City, MO. In 1949, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer founded the Kenneth A. and Helen F. Spencer Foundation and began making generous awards to universities, museums and art groups throughout the Midwest. After her husband's death in 1960, Mrs. Spencer took the lead in philanthropy; she became president of the Foundation and continued in that position until her own death, in 1982.

In the mid-1960s Mrs. Spencer, a woman of vision already noted for her support of the arts and humanities in the Kansas City area, decided to build a library at the University of Kansas in memory of her husband, specifically to meet the needs of rare books, manuscripts, archives, and their users. The Kenneth Spencer Research Library was dedicated on 8 November 1968.

Mrs. Spencer received the Distinguished Service Citation, KU's highest honor, in 1968. Among her other gifts to KU is the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art. She was also a major benefactor of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Linda Hall Library of Science and Technology, the Bishop Quayle Bible Collection at Baker University, and the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

As Alexandra Mason, the first Spencer Librarian, has written, "Mrs. Spencer's interest in what she called 'Kenneth's Library' did not end with the completion of the building. She remained a good friend to the Spencer Library until her death, visiting it frequently and demonstrating the most lively interest in its activities, particularly in the development of the collections and in the service it provided to students and other young researchers, and donating to it both her husband's and her own papers."