There's a small but important typo in the Mac OS X section of the Helm install guide at:
$ brew install cairo --without-x
$ brew install pango --without-x
should be:
$ brew install cairo --without-x11
$ brew install pango --without-x11
The former doesn't actually avoid the X11 dependency, and asks you to install XQuartz:
$ brew install cairo --without-x
cairo: Unsatisfied dependency: XQuartz 0.0.0
Homebrew does not package XQuartz. Installers may be found at:
Error: An unsatisfied requirement failed this build.