Marie-Louise Hellgren studied industrial design at HDK Academy of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg. From 1983 until -91 Hellgren ran her own design studio from where she designed for a.o. Höganäs Keramik, for whom she made the tableware range Collection in 1990. Boda Nova, Design House Stockholm and Starbucks Coffee are other clients of hers.
In 2017 Hellgren designed the stool Lilla Snåland for the Swedish brand Stolab. The stool is made by using 14 pieces of waste wood from the manufacturing of Carl Malmsten's classic Windsor chair Lilla Åland. The seat of Lilla Snåland is glued together in a shape inspired by the Fibonacci code. For the stool Hellgren has received several awards such as the Interior Accessory of the Year by Elle Decoration Swedish Design Awards in 2017.
Hellgren was one of the pioneers of up cycling design when she during the summer of 2020 founded the Pop-Upcycling Studio in Stockholm, a combined exhibition and workshop where she a.o. showed the daybed Spiderbed, made of left-over wood from the building industry. Under the upcycling brand HeartEarth, founded in 2016, Hellgren continues to work for a greater sense of re-use in the furniture and interior manufacturing designing a.o. the Wedge Rug, a carpet made of Tencel fiber launched by Asplund in 2018.
In 2020 Hellgren was awarded the Residence Design Award: Environmental profile for her work with up-cycling. She is represented with Lilla Snålland at the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts and at the Museum of Furniture Studies in Stockholm.
Marie-Louise Hellgren´s stool Lilla Snåland was a part of the Female Traces exhibition at the Museum of Furniture Studies in 2019/2020.
