Helen Wilmans (1831-1907) was born in Fairfield, Illinois, and died in Daytona Beach, Florida. She was a journalist, author, and leader in the New Thought movement. Between 1882 and 1884, she published a journal entitled The Woman's World. She stopped due to lack of funds, and then began publishing it again in 1885 as a monthly journal, along with a weekly magazine, Freedom. Wilman's formal involvement with the New Thought movement began when she studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins, a former student of Mary Baker Eddy's. In the 1890s, she founded "City Beautiful," a New Thought community in Sea Breeze, Florida, where she taught and healed. In 1901, a fraud order was placed on Wilmans by the United States Postal Service for advertising absent treatment in Freedom. Wilmans fought the case over the next six years and had her conviction and the fraud order quashed. However, the trial, which members of the press viewed as a persecution, had taken a personal and financial toll on Wilmans and she passed on shortly after her acquittal. Wilmans showed an interest in Christian Science in early 1885 when she read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and wrote to Mary Baker Eddy, offering to review the book.

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