Henk ten Have was born in Voorschoten, the Netherlands in June 1951. After completing his secondary school (Gymnasium alfa) in May 1969 he started studying medicine at the University of Leiden and was awarded the Medical Degree in April 1976. In 1978 and 1979 Ten Have worked as a physician in the municipal health services (GG&GD) in the city of Rotterdam. In June 1982, Henk ten Have was appointed as part-time Instructor at the State University of Limburg in Maastricht, the Netherlands. In January 1983 he was awarded the PhD degree in philosophy at the University of Leiden. In July 1985 he was appointed professor in philosophy at the State University of Limburg. In September 1991 Henk ten Have moved to the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University Nijmegen) where he has been appointed as full professor of medical ethics in the School of Medical Sciences. He became involved in many public debates as well as expert committees in the area of healthcare ethics and healthcare policies. He was also appointed as member of the newly founded Central Committee on Research involving Human Subjects (CCMO) in the Netherlands (1999-2003), and served in the Ethical Issues Review Panel of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) (2006-2008).

In September 2003, Ten Have moved to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in Paris as Director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology. Shortly after he had arrived, the member states invited the Director-General to explore the possibility of developing a universal declaration of global bioethical principles. Under his guidance, the International Bioethics Committee drafted the text and carried out consultations in many countries and with various stakeholders. The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights was unanimously adopted by all member states of UNESCO on 19 October 2005. Since then, Ten Have has set up several UNESCO programs to implement the Declaration, such as the Ethics Education program, the Global Ethics Observatory, and the National Bioethics Committees program.

In 2005, he was elected as Correspondent Member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (KNAW-Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences). In 2008, he was awarded the Ethos Prize in Bioethics, sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. In the same year he received an honorary degree of the Medical University of Pleven in Bulgaria. Retiring from UNESCO in 2010, Henk ten Have started in July 2010 as Director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, U.S.A.. In 2015, he was appointed as ‘Lifetime Honorary Member’ of the Bangladesh Bioethics Society, and in 2017 as Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Vatican City. He retired as Director at Duquesne University in July 2018, , where he now is Emeritus Professor since 2019. In 2021 he was appointed as Research Professor at the Faculty of Bioethics of Anahuac University in Mexico, where he is teaching in the MA Global Bioethics program.