After studying photography under Hanna Seewald at the Bayerische Lehranstalt für Lichtbildwesen (where Lotte Jacobi also studied) in Munich in 1931, Fritz Henle became photo-assistant to the art historian Clarence Kennedy in Florence, Italy. Between 1934 and 1936 he worked as an advertising photographer for a shipping company (probably Lloyd Triestino), whose commissions took him to India, China, Japan and Korea, as well as throughout the Mediterranean. His visits to Japan resulted in his second photobook Das ist Japan (Heering, 1937), which was published after his emigration to New York. His first photobook was Rom (Velhagen & Klasing, 1935). In 1932 the journalist Ann Tizian Leitich published his essay collection and photobook New York, with the same publishing house.

Soon after his arrival on September 1936 in New York, he started working for the Black Star photo agency and, through this cooperation, published his first photos for Life magazine in 1937. He contributed with two images to a reportage titled: “The American Legion takes New York City.” (Life, 4 October 1937, pp. 24f.) In experimental shots he captured the atmosphere of the parade by focusing on the tickertape flying through the air and falling into the street. In the image on the right the tickertape draws surrealistic lines in the air, an effect achieved by a long exposure. From his elevated vantage point, he was able to capture the size of the parade along 5th Avenue. The second image was taken from the top of the Radio City building, where he photographed the tickertape from various windows. The steep view downwards gives the image a dynamic downward movement – corresponding to the movements of the tickertape. The image is cut and framed in the centre by St. Patrick’s Cathedral. As a foreigner to the city, he captured the parade using dynamic and unconventional perspectives while at the same time experimenting technically and with his handling of his camera. Further images show his creative and experimental approach to the city. In the same year, 1937, he created a photo story in a similar vein to Walter Wagner’s movie 52nd Street. On a walk from the East Side on the East River to the West Side on the Hudson, focusing on the bars and the amusement district on 52nd Street, he captured with his camera the ethnic and cultural diversity of the district (“Memo to: Walter Wander, Subject: 52nd Street”, photographs by Fritz Henle. Life, 29 November 1937, pp. 64–67.)

Beside his work for Black Star, soon after his arrival, Fritz Henle became member of a group ten photographers, which shared a common workspace on the top floor of a skyscraper at 538 Fifth Avenue (Flukinger 2009, 10). The group was led by the New York born photographer Ewing Krainin. It's not known which photographers were part of these meetings, perhaps also the founder Bradley Smith of the professional association American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) created in 1944. Other émigrés photographers who later became member of the ASMP were Josef Breitenbach and Fred Stein. Already two months after his arrival, in November 1936, Fritz Henle had the chance to have his first one-man show in the lobby galleries of the Rockefeller Center, where images of his travels to Japan and China were shown (Anonymous 1936, 10). Already in March 1936, before Fritz Henle's emigration, photographs of his travel to India were exhibited at the Cleveland Museum.

Many more of Fritz Henle's reportages and images were published in Life throughout the 1930s and into the 1950s. His first Life cover was published in 1939 and in 1938 he was sent to Paris to do a picture story on the city. Although, to his great disappointment, the resulting photographs were initially rejected, in August 1944, when Paris was liberated, the images were published in several newspapers. Reflecting as they did the atmosphere before the war, the images were an expression of hope for better times. "An album of photographs taken before the war, many of which are distinguished additions to the already massive iconography of the city. Mr. Henle’s artistic approach suffers a little from a preoccupation with trivia; one is often supposed to be able to read a significance in the pictures that very well may not be there" (The New Yorker, 19 April 1947, S. 144f.). Alexey Brodovitch also selected several of the Paris images for Harper’s Bazaar and in 1947 all were finally published in a photobook titled Paris (Ziff Davis, 1947), for which Brodovitch designed both the cover and interior. Henle was not the only one whose photographs were featured in the book. Other photographers who contributed included Henle's émigré colleagues Fred Stein and André Kertész with pictures taken on previous visits to Paris. The photobook was featured in the January 1947 issue of Popular Photography, another magazine, in addition to Life that regularly published images and photo stories by Fritz Henle. During the 1930s and 1940s his work appeared in more than 30 issues. In an article in the August 1944 issue featuring some of his fashion photographs shot in the urban space of New York, Henle stated that unposed outdoor shoots produced the best results. (Harkness 1944) Since Popular Photography was directed at an amateur photographer readership, Fritz Henle gave tips for creating fashion shoots using simple methods: for example, by creating a narrative through placing the models, unposed and engaged in certain actions, in front of an urban setting. “For tea gowns, a roof with a city background will hint at rooftop restaurants and dancing in a gown like the one you are showing. […] Recognizable scenes – such as Radio City setting above – suggest that suits illustrated are planned for city street wear.” (Harkness 1944, 38). In his working method and handling of his camera for outdoor shoots, Fritz Henle belonged to a group of photographers who replaced the the studio with outdoor locations. This was also the preference of his émigré colleague Hermann Landshoff in the 1940s. Popular Photography was an important magazine for émigré photographers, who were able to publish both their images from their previous times in Europe as well as newer photographs from their exile in New York. Among the émigré photographers published were Lucien Aigner, Ruth Bernhard, Erwin Blumenfeld, Josef Breitenbach, Alexey Brodovitch, Rudy Burckhardt, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Andreas Feininger, Philippe Halsman, Lotte Jacobi ,Lilly Joss, Clemens Kalischer, George Karger, André Kértész, Hermann Landshoff, Lisa Larsen, Herbert Matter, Hansel Mieth, Lisette Model, Martin Munkacsi, Fritz Neugass, Walter Sanders, Kurt Safranski, Xanti Schawinsky, Rolf Tietgens, Werner Wolff, Roman Vishniac and Ylla.

During his career as a photojournalist as well as street, fashion and travel photographer, Fritz Henle's scope was wide-ranging. A keen observer, he captured private moments in the everyday lives of people, as well as events and street scenes. Most of the time, he used a Rolleiflex camera, which can be seen in a portrait made by the German émigré photographer Herbert Matter showing Henle with his camera. In 1942, he left Black Star and moved to Washington with his wife Atty Henle (born Van Den Berg, who was a Dutch ballet dancer and model for some of his fashion shots) joined the Office of War Information (OWI). During World War II the primary role of the OWI photographers were to record the life of Americans which changed with the entry into war. Other émigrés photographers working for the OWI were Andreas Feininger, Kurt Safranski as well as Carola Gregor. It can be supposed that it were many more.  

During his lifetime, he published more than 20 photobooks on his travels, including: China (Holt & Co, 1943); Mexico (Ziff Davis, 1945); Hawaii (1948, Hastings House, 1948); The Caribbean (Studio Publications, 1957). In 1950, he also wrote Fritz Henle’s Rollei (Hastings House, 1950), a guide and photo handbook for amateur photographers. In 1956/57 a revised edition, titled Fritz Henle’s Guide to Rollei Photography (Studio Publications, 1956 / Thames & Hudson, 1957) was published.