Born in the US (1952), Rachel Rowen moved to Israel in 1975, shortly after receiving her B.A. from Yale University. Twenty years later, she returned to her childhood fascination with silversmithing and studied with Bezalel graduate Shalom Tubi. In 1996, she opened her own studio in Raanana, Israel. She was chosen as a finalist in the 1998 Havdalah Spice Container Competition of the Spertus Museum in Chicago. Synagogues in Israel and across the US have commissioned her to design Torah ornaments and synagogue art. In designing Judaica she draws on classical forms of the past and presents them in a modern idiom, giving her work rare significance.

Most of all Rachel enjoys changing the shape of silver by hammering, twisting and bending. She is indebted to her teachers, Shalom Tubi, who introduced her to the craft and early on taught her how to transform a flat disc into a bowl by a technique known as sinking, Randy Jean Long of Indiana University, who taught her raising, enabling her to fashion such things as oval bowls, and Brian Clarke, who added the technique of anti-clastic raising, making possible her Nava candlesticks which curve concavely along one axis and convexly along the perpendicular axis. These candlesticks also reflect her admiration of the fluid lines of Danish design from the latter half of the twentieth century. Rendering in silver various textile techniques such as knitting and embroidering, has also intrigued her.

Rachel currently lives in Raanana, Israel, is mother to four wonderful children and twelve lovely grandchildren. She is married to Louis Halle Rowen, who has always been supportive of her in every way.