Henry Valensi is a French painter born in 1883 in Algiers. He started painting the landscapes of his native Algeria at an early age. His family moved to Paris in 1899 and encouraged his emerging passion for pictorial art. In 1902 Valensi entered the Julian Academy where he studied painting under the direction of Jules Lefebvre and Tony Robert-Fleury. In 1905 Valensi exhibits at the Salon des Orientalists and in 1907 he exhibits at the Salon des Independants.

He travelled a lot in Europe and around the Mediterranean basin. His landscapes begin to transform themselves by integrating abstract elements. In 1912 he participated in the creation of the Selection d’Or.  During the War he was the Peintre de l’Etat-Major de General Gourand and after the cessation of hostilities continued his travels in Europe and Africa. In 1932, Henry Valensi, and three other painters Charles Blanc-Gatti , Gustave Bourgogne and Vito Stracquadaini founded the Association of Musical Artists . Valensi organised and participated in twenty-three Salon de Peinture Musicaliste exhibitions in Paris, the first one being in 1932 at Galerie Renaissance.

Painting during the 1930s through the 1950s, the "Musicalistes" interpreted the rhythms of music in two dimensions through abstract shapes. He participated in many other “Musicaliste” exhibitions in cities across Europe such as Prague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Budapest, Bratislava, and Limoges. He exhibited at the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in 1947. He also exhibited regularly at the Salon Comparaisons, and in addition had several one-man exhibitions throughout his career – Vichy (1909), Galerie de Boetie in Paris (1913), and Rome (1923). In 1973 the first retrospective of the Salon de Peinture Musicaliste was held in Paris at the Galerie Hexagramme, and Valensi was represented in the exhibition Paris-Moscou at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1979. He died in 1960.