While In maryland Jim with his older brother Paul, experimented with a variety of artistic techniques. In 1954, while still in high school, he began his television career performing puppets on a local Washington, DC Saturday morning program on WTOP-TV. The following year, as a freshman at the University of Maryland, he was given his own twice-daily, five-minute show, Sam and Friends, on the local NBC affiliate, WRC-TV. Jim's first performing partner was Jane Nebel, whom he met at the University, and who later became his wife. Sam and Friends introduced many Muppet mainstays, music, snarky humor, and technical tricks. The show also introduced the most famous Muppet of all, Kermit.

The success of Sam and Friends led to guest appearances on such national network programs as The Steve Allen Show, The Jack Paar Show, and The Today Show. with the popularity of the Puppets growing Jim moved to New York and signed on Jerry Juhl, Don Shalin and Frank Oz to help develope the charaters with the first popular chacter being Rowlf who appreaed on The Jimmy Dean Show from 1963-1966

Having established a group of talented collaborators, Jim Henson was able to pursue his career in puppetry and develop his strong interest in filmmaking. Between 1964 and 1969, Jim produced several experimental films including the award-winning Time Piece, Youth '68, and The Cube. These projects expanded Jim's knowledge of various film techniques, leading to greater innovations with the Muppets. In the mid-1960s, Joan Ganz Cooney, a public television producer, began work on Sesame Street, an educational children's show that would premiere in 1969. Based on Jim's success in creating short, funny puppet pieces, Cooney asked him to create a family of characters to populate Sesame Street. These included Ernie and Bert, Oscar the Grouch, Grover, Cookie Monster, and of course the 8-foot-2-inch Big Bird. Working with Children's Television Workshop on Sesame Street also gave Jim Henson the opportunity to continue his experiments with film techniques. With his talented team, Jim produced over two dozen live action and animated shorts to teach counting and other concepts.

With the sucess of Sesame Street, Jum wanted to create a show of his own based on his muppets and with the help London-based television producer, Lord Lew Grade. production began in 1975 at Grade's ATV Studios on the Muppet Show Spaned from this were characters such as Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, performed by Frank Oz; Gonzo the Great, performed by Dave Goelz; Scooter, performed by Richard Hunt; Lew Zealand, performed by Jerry Nelson; and Rizzo the Rat, performed by Steve Whitmire. The Muppet Show also led to five feature films: The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Muppet Treasure Island.

Other Films and projects that Jim Henson Worked on were the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth which further developed the use of Animatronics for complex puppet creations and helped to establish the Jim Hensson Creature shop which produce elaborate mechanical charters that also influenced George Lucus with many of the creatures he developed in the Star Wars Films. His projects were for television in the 1980's where he won 4 Emmys for his creative televions programing for the shows Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, and Jim Hensons Greek Myths.