She soloed with orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Weimar and the Davos Festival Orchestra. A founding member of both the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and a sought-after concertmaster, she worked with conductors like Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Harding, and Andris Nelsons.
Her teachers included Rainer Kussmaul (Freiburg), Thomas Brandis (Lübeck), Gerhard Schulz (Vienna), Koji Toyoda (Berlin), and Valery Gradov (Mannheim). Henja Semmler also graduated in baroque violin at the UdK Berlin with Irmgard Huntgeburth, and she devotes herself to contemporary music as well, collaborating with many renowned composers such as Sofia Gubaidulina, Heinz Holliger, Toshio Hosokawa or Jörg Widmann.
Henja Semmler is Professor of violin at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna since 2018.