Martha Buhs was born in Detroit, Michigan to Kathleen and Lloyd Howard Buhs. She grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and attended the Kingswood School before moving to Canada in 1959. She later adopted the stage surname Henry, which is the legal surname of her first husband, actor Donnelly Rhodes. She was one of the first graduates of the National Theatre School in Montreal, receiving her certificate of studies in acting exceptionally in 1962.
Henry's first season at the Stratford Festival was in 1962, playing Miranda to William Hutt's first Prospero in The Tempest. She became a leading actress at the Stratford Festival in the late 1960s, and has since appeared in some 65 productions at the Festival, 30 of them plays by William Shakespeare. She won acclaim for several roles including Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Isabella in Measure for Measure, Olga in Three Sisters and Paulina in The Winter's Tale. Ms Henry has worked for 10 artistic directors. Henry and a team of three other directors were hired to lead Stratford's 1981 season after the resignation of artistic director Robin Phillips. The team was dismissed a few months later, causing Henry and some other Stratford veterans to work away from the Festival for several years. Henry received the prestigious Stratford Legacy Award. in October 2014. In 2018, in her 44th season of performing, at age 80, Henry played Prospero in The Tempest, directed by Antoni Cimolino, and was Director of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction. Chris Jones, theater critic for the Chicago Tribune in praising Henry's performance wrote, "in all my years watching shows at this theater, a miragelike fountain of excellence... I have never seen anything quite like the experience of watching Henry...".
Artistic director and awards
Henry was artistic director of the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario from 1988-94. In 1993 she traveled to Guyana, South America where she starred in Darrell Wasyk's film, Mustard Bath, winning a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress. She returned to the Stratford stage to play Mary Tyrone in the widely respected 1994-95 production of Long Day's Journey into Night. Henry won a Best Actress Genie award for the 1996 film version that followed. In February 2007, she was appointed director of Stratford's Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training.
Notable television roles include Catherine in Empire, Inc., the Prime Minister's mother in H20 and the owner of the Chateau Rousseau in Ken Finkleman's At the Hotel. In 1994, she starred in the TV film And Then There was One.
