Children studied at the gymnasium for nine years, learning French, English, German, and Latin. Physics, chemistry, zoology, and botany, geology, mineralogy, history, and drawing were also taught. The TANAKH and literature in Hebrew were studied. The first director of the gymnasium was Dr. of Philosophy and well-known Zionist activist Bentsion Mosinzon.

In the first year, only 17 students enrolled in the gymnasium — parents were afraid to send their children to a school teaching in a newly revived language. However, the number of students began to grow quickly thanks to the school’s good reputation. Unlike most educational institutions of that time, in the first Jewish gymnasium, boys and girls sat in the same class.

In 1907, at the VIII World Zionist Congress, a delegate from Great Britain, the judge of the city of Bradford Jacob Moser, proposed to collect 80,000 francs for the construction of a separate building for the Hebrew gymnasium in Jaffa. The only condition was that the school be named after the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl. The construction was completed in 1910 at the beginning of the school year. It was the first public building in the young city of Tel Aviv, becoming its cultural center. The gymnasium was named “Herzliya”.

Many of its graduates became prominent figures in Israel. Among them were Israel’s first Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, Israel’s Minister of Science, physicist Yuval Ne’eman, President of the Supreme Court Dr. Yitzhak Olshan, founder of the Haganah, laying the foundations of the Israel Defense Forces, Eliyahu Golomb, Mayor of Tel Aviv Ron Huldai. Also, future figures of Israeli culture studied at the “Herzliya” gymnasium: Israel Prize laureates poet Avraham Shlonsky, whose first poems were published in the gymnasium newspaper “Morning Dew”, poet Nathan Alterman, writer Aaron Megged, artist Nahum Gutman, sculptor Yitzhak Danziger, and many others.