Hilda Sehested was born on the 27th of April 1858 into a noble family at Broholm Manor on Funen and died on the 15th of April 1936 in Copenhagen.
As part of the general education required of women from her social class, Hilda Sehested was taught piano and music theory as a child. Sehested did not attend the conservatory. At age 15 she began her training as a pianist studying privately with C.F.E. Horneman and from 1886 she began studying composition with Orla Rosenhoff.
Sehested expressed a desire to free herself from her native region and her social duties at Broholm and moved to Copenhagen in 1892. There she was closer to the musical life in the capital and like-minded, aspiring musicians and composers.
After the death of her fiancé, the archaeologist Henry Petersen, shortly before their planned wedding in 1896, she stopped composing and she stopped her studies with Rosenhoff. In the following years, she tried to find a new path in life by studying to become an organist. She graduated in 1899, although it remains unknown whether she worked as an organist after that.
It was not until 1900 that she returned to her old musical circle and began composing and publishing music again. In 1903 she published the works Klaversonate i As-dur and Intermezzi for violin, cello and piano, and the following year she began composing for wind instruments. In 1905 she wrote Suite für Cornet in B und Klavier, which in 1915 was reworked into Suite for Kornet og Orkester. The piano sonata's compositional style was described by her teacher Orla Rosenhoff as "hyper-romantic" and that it was characterised by her love of Wagner and Schumann.
In 1913-1914 she wrote her first and only opera Agnete og Havmanden (Agnete and the merman), which used text by the author Sophus Michaëlis and was accepted for performance at the Royal Theatre. Due to World War I and the shortage of materials caused by the war, the production had to be cancelled.
By the 1910s, she had gained recognition as a composer and her works were performed by several soloists and ensembles. The orchestral pieces Lygtemænd and Mosekonen Brygger from 1915 were both performed at a composition concert in 1915, where Politiken's reviewer wrote that Sehested showed herself to be a "really skilful lady".
Her love of composing music for wind instruments continued. In the mid-1920s she wrote the two major works for trombone Morceau pathétique. Pour Trombone avec accompagnement de Piano in 1924 and Course des athlètes du Nord. Morceau symphonique pour trombone avec orchestra ou piano in 1925.
The last ten years leading to her death in 1936 Hilda Sehested suspended her composing career.
