Hanna Henning was born Johanna Julie Adelheid Elfriede von Koblinski on August 16, 1884, in the Stuttgart district of Cannstatt (today: Bad Cannstatt). Nothing is known about her education, but she began her artistic career in 1907/08 as a singer at the court opera of the Ducal Court Theater in Dessau (today: Altes Theater). Her surname Henning stems from a brief marriage to the mill owner Hans Henning during her time in Dessau, whose name she kept even after the divorce.

It is unclear exactly when and how Henning switched to filmmaking. She made her first documented films in 1915 with the popular child and youth star Josef "Bubi" Roemer, but as she already founded her own production company in that year, it can be assumed that she had already been active in the film business before then. Initially, the films were produced by Badner & Co. Bubifilm, which merged with Henning's company in 1916 to form Bubi-Film Henning & Co. GmbH.

Until 1919, Henning made numerous shorter films in the "Krümelchen" series (e.g. "Krümelchens erste Liebe", 1918) and the equally popular "Bubi" series (e.g. "Bubi als Heiratsvermittler", 1916, and "Bubi und das Wunderschwein", 1917). She also directed numerous star vehicles for Ally Kay, including "Ally schippt" (1918) and "Am Glück vorbei" (1918).

Hanna Henning's first longer film was the melodrama "Im Banne des Schweigens" (1916), for which she had also written the screenplay; Josef "Bubi" Roemer also took on the male lead here. For "Mutter" (1917), a promotional film for "Germany's Donation for the Protection of Infants and Young Children", Hanna Henning received the Cross of Merit for War Relief. When in 1918 the trade publication Der Film described the Austrian Iwa Raffay as the first female director in German film (issue no. 24), Hanna Henning objected to this in a full-page advertisement (issue no. 27, 1918).

From 1918 onwards, she only worked occasionally as a producer; instead, Henning concentrated entirely on screenwriting and directing, mostly for other production companies. In 1919, she directed her first full-length feature film, the love triangle "Die Siebzehnjährigen", starring Hanni Weisse and Kurt Vespermann, for the Berlin-based Segall-Film. The publication Der Film wrote: "With this film, Hanna Henning places herself in the first row of our first directors".
 
With the artist drama "Das große Licht" (1920), the Georg Engel adaptation "Die Furcht vor dem Weibe" (1921) and the melodrama "Am roten Kliff" (1921), Henning made further successful films with prominent casts that were highly praised by critics. In the first half of 1924, she directed several documentaries; some sources suggest that this was due to a lack of other offers.

In July 1924, Hanna Henning founded the production company Nordeuropäische Film-Compagnie GmbH, Nordrop for short, together with the Chemnitz theater director Gerhard Kroog, yet within a few months it had accumulated such massive debts that a creditors' committee had to be formed. Apparently, no films were produced. Hanna Henning did not live to see the company’s impending bankruptcy: on January 12, 1925, she died in Berlin's Westend Hospital; depending on the source, the cause was pneumonia (Kinematograph) or suicide (Linzer Tages-Post).

Only very few of Hanna Henning's films have survived in archives, though, even the patchy filmography, which can be reconstructed from contemporary reviews and advertisements in film magazines, indicates that she was one of the most productive and best-known German directors of her time.