As the previous educators have noted, there are very few references to Lenina’s and Helmholtz’s physical appearance. I think the lack of description is worth noting because it reveals something bigger about the society depicted in the novel.
Remember that the society in this novel is strongly segregated into five different castes. Each caste has a different job to do, and is bred exclusively for that purpose. Lenina, for example, is part of the beta caste, meaning that she has an elevated social position. Helmhotz is an alpha. He is at the very pinnacle of the social structure, even higher than Lenina.
Arguably, their physical appearances are less important (and, therefore, rarely mentioned) because this society focuses on the group, not the individual. This society is geared towards creating a shared identity for each caste, which helps to bond its members together. If it focused on the individual, then the...
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caste would become less important and, as a result, the goal of the greater good would be threatened.
So, by not giving his characters a sense of physical individuality, Huxley is reminding the reader that in this society, it is not the individual that is favored. Instead, society favors the caste, as a group, working towards the goal of the greater good.
Neither character is ever given a full, detailed physical description. It can be inferred that both are attractive, certainly. However, they lack anything that makes them special or distinct. This is a world where people are made to serve the state and where everyone belongs to everyone else—so, of course, everyone is disposable and interchangeable. One pretty face is as good as another.
Lenina, in particular, is described as resembling a doll. Aside from her beauty, she has no other trait which endears her to others. She is not intelligent (which is indirectly pointed out when Henry calls her "pneumatic," or in other words, an air-head), and she is not kind-hearted. She exists to look good and have fun.
So, the lack of physical description goes along with the lack of soul of these characters.
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, none of the characters are described in the detail that is characteristic of many authors. This is done, perhaps, to suggest the lack of humanity that they possess. For instance, little is written of Helmholtz Watson's physical appearance, Rather, he is described as the mental counterpart of Bernard Marx, his friend. Whereas Bernard is characterized by a physical defect, Helmholtz possesses a "mental excess." In Chapter 4, Part 2, he is described,
That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability....This Escalator-Squash champion, this defatigable lover...was interested in something else.
By his attractiveness to women, it is suggested, but not stated, that Helmholtz is good-looking. Rather than being concerned about his looks, however, Helmholz feels that he has something inside himself that is "only waiting for...a chance to come out."
Lenina is first described in Chapter 3 as Henry Foster talks with the Assistant Predestinator,
"Lenina Crowne?....Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic...."
The word pneumatic suggests air, so Lenina is soft and perhaps even a bit vacuous mentally. Later, in Part 3 of Chapter 6 she is described as having "large blue eyes." Then in Chapter 9 as John the Savage discovers Lenina, and his heart beats wildly, he is "enchanted" by her beauty:
There...lay Lenina, fast asleep and so beautiful in the midst of her curls, so touchingly childish with her pink toes....
Further in Chapter 13, when Lenina offers herself to John, he rebuffs her and strikes at her; once alone she looks in a mirror at the imprint of his hand on her "pearly flesh." Then, in Chapter 18 as Lenina approaches John with an "abject smile," distressed and lovesick, she is described as having "a doll-beautiful face" with "blue eyes" that seem to "grow larger, brighter."There is a lack of humanity inthe description of her appearance here as John rejects her.
Helmholtz and Lenina are not clearly drawn because they are meant to support main characters such as Bernard Marx and John the Savage; for, by their juxtaposition with these characters, the others are better developed.