Henry Clay Sr. was an American attorney and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the "Great Compromiser" and was part of the "Great Triumvirate" of Congressmen alongside fellow Whig Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.

Colonel Henry Thomas Curling was a Royal Artillery officer of the British Army who served between 1868 and 1902. He fought in the Anglo-Zulu war and during the Battle of Isandlwana was one of only a few British officers to survive; in fact he was the only British front line survivor. Afterwards he wrote a dramatic report on the battle and several letters home that described it further. After the Zulu war he saw service in Afghanistan, Aldershot and Egypt. The letters he wrote during the Zulu war were posthumously published in the book The Curling letters of the Zulu War: "there was an awful slaughter" (2001) co-authored by Adrian Greaves and Brian Best.

Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Henry Dwight Sedgwick III was an American lawyer and author.

Henry Edward Krehbiel was an American music critic and musicologist who was the chief music critic of The New York Tribune for more than forty years. Along with his contemporaries Richard Aldrich, Henry Theophilus Finck, W.J. Henderson and James Huneker, Krehbiel is considered part of the 'Old Guard', a group of leading New York-based music critics who first established a uniquely American school of criticism. A critic with a strong bend towards empiricism, he frequently sought out first hand experiences, accounts and primary sources when writing; drawing his own conclusions rather than looking to what other writers had already written. A meliorist, Krehbiel believed that the role of criticism was largely to support music that uplifted the human spirit and intellect, and that criticism should serve not only as a means of taste making but also as a mode to educate the public. His book How to Listen to Music was widely used as an instructional guide by the music consuming public in the United States during the last years of the 19th century and first several decades of the 20th century.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. was an American paleontologist, geologist and eugenics advocate. He was the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years and a cofounder of the American Eugenics Society.

Henry Fielding was an English writer and magistrate known for the use of humour and satire in his works. His 1749 comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling was a seminal work in the genre. Along with Samuel Richardson, Fielding is seen as the founder of the traditional English novel. He also played an important role in the history of law enforcement in the United Kingdom, using his authority as a magistrate to found the Bow Street Runners, London's first professional police force.

The Reverend Henry Francis Cary was a British author and translator, best known for his blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante.

Henry George was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land should belong equally to all members of society. George famously argued that a single tax on land values would create a more productive and just society.

Alice Marie Céleste Durand was a French writer best known under her pen name Henry Gréville.