Helen Jean Brew

Helen Jean Brew ( Butler; 22 November 1922 – 12 January 2013) was a New Zealand actor, birth campaigner, documentary filmmaker, educator and speech therapist for children. She developed a belief that most of Western society's dysfunction to its approach to childbirth created stress and suffering for women in childbirth and in 1952 co-established the Natural Childbirth Group that later became Parents Centres New Zealand. Brew taught pregnant women informal antenatal classes and she travelled to China, Israel, Europe and Tibet during her career. She made film documentaries such as Birth with R.D. Laing and had a role in the soap opera Close to Home in 1975.

Early life and education Brew's birth was on 22 November 1922 in New Brighton, a suburb of Christchurch. She was the second daughter of the landscape artist Grace Ellen Cumming and the solicitor Guy Butler, who edited the Gazette Law Reports. Brew was brought up in Christchurch. when she could not find the money for it. She was diagnosed with dementia in 2000 and was cared for at home until she was moved into the specialist dementia care home Millvale House in Waikanae in 2005.

Legacy Diana Dekker of The Dominion Post wrote of Brew's legacy: "She did not change the world. The films she intended as the instrument of global change came up against too many obstacles, mostly financial, and human nature remained as perverse as ever. But she was heard and had impact overseas and she was the instrument of significant social change in New Zealand." Brew was added to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in December 2020.