Christopher Henze was born in Pasadena on January 3, 1942. At age 13, he was enrolled at the Thacher School, a boarding school in Ojai, California, where he completed his secondary school education. Henze would go on to attend Pomona College, graduating in 1963 as an anthropology major, with minors in French and German. In 1964, he joined the Peace Corps at age 22 and served for two years as an English and physical education instructor in Danané, Côte d'Ivoire. Returning from his Peace Corps service in 1966, Henze taught English for one year at the Polytechnic School in Pasadena before being accepted into a position with the United States Foreign Service. Embarking on life long career as a foreign service officer, Henze served in various locales and roles: South Africa (1968-69); Tanzania (1969-70); Washington D.C. (1970-74, as Assistant Science Advisor); Slovenia (1974-76); the Johns Hopkins University Center in Bologna, Italy (1976-77, for graduate work in economics, political science, and European Community Affairs); Paris (1977-81, as Press Attaché); Washington D.C. (1981-84, as Policy Officer for Europe); Geneva, Switzerland (1984-88, as Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and Other International Organizations); Paris (1988-92, as Cultural Attaché). After retiring from the Foreign Service, Henze held two subsequent jobs: working for a year as a consultant for the International Herald Tribune before spending several years as the acting head of the Press and Publications Division of the International Energy Agency. Henze is retired and lives in Paris with his wife Shana.

Carlo Henze was born in 1907 in Naples, Italy, the son of biochemist Martin Henze. Carlo and his family moved to Innsbruck, Austria where his father had become a professor of biochemistry at the University of Innsbruck. Carlo, himself, would go on to earn a medical degree from the University of Innsbruck, becoming an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology, before joining Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland. With the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938 and the threat of being drafted into the German Army as an involuntary German citizen, Carlo was able to secure a company transfer to the United States, where he became medical director of Sandoz in New York City. Carlo enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1941 and was promoted to captain in the Medical Intelligence Division of the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army due to his medical background and being a native German speaker. In 1944, Henze was transferred to the European Theater and served on assignment as a member of the top-secret Alsos Mission, whose main objective was to determine German progress in developing an atomic bomb and biological and chemical weapons. Following the war, Carlo arranged for his parents to move to the United States, where they settled in Pasadena, California. Martin Henze was welcomed as a distinguished scientist at the California Institute of Technology. Carlo had returned to work at Sandoz in New York, becoming vice president in charge of the medical and research departments, and later, president of the Sandoz Foundation. Carlo Henze died in 2003.