Seligman Heller was born in Roudnice nad Lebem (now in the Czech Republic) and studied at the University of Vienna. He then went into his business with his father and in 1866 became teacher of German at a commercial school in Prague, at the same time engaging in journalism. After the appearance of his epic on the Wandering Jew and a book of his poems, he moved to Vienna where he became dramatic critic for the Deutsche Zeitung and subsequently taught the history of literature at the Handelsakademie. Heller translated into German from the works of Dante, Sanskrit classic literature and medieval Hebrew poetry.