Born in Copenhagen in 1947, where he studied literature, German studies and philosophy, Vangsgaard has been working as a freelance translator and publisher since 1974. He translated mainly philosophical and scientific writings from German (Schelling, George Simmel, Ernst Bloch, Hans Jonas, Jürgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck, Günther Anders), lyric poetry (Friedrich Rückert, Georg Heym, Sarah Kirsch, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Manfred Peter Hein) and in collaboration with Peter Urban-Halle also poetry from Danish into German (including Per Højholt, Thorkild Bjørnvig and Ole Sarvig).

At the end of 2000 he published his translation of Victor Klemperer's Tagebücher 1933-1945, I Want to Bear Witness. In 1999 he received the honorary award of the Danish Translators' Association, the vice-chairman of which he was between 1984 and 1992.

Henning Vangsgaard died in Copenhagen on 30 January, 2018.