Nienhuis was born in the city of Groningen as the son of commissioner Lambertus Nienhuis (1834-1890) and Alberdina Goedhuis (1835-1875). He was educated at the Minerva Academy in his birthplace and then at the Rijksschool voor Kunstnijverheid in Amsterdam. In 1895 he worked for Plateelfabriek De Distel te Amsterdam. A year later he founded Lotus Tile Bakery in Watergraafsmeer. His company was taken over by De Distel in 1901. Nienhuis was then put in charge of the decorative department. His invention of a matte glaze was soon adopted by other factories.

From 1905 Nienhuis taught at the Applied Arts School in Haarlem. In that year he started designing jewelery for the jeweler's firm Hoeker & Zoon. He won a silver medal at the 1910 World Exhibition in Brussels with one of his designs. In the jewelery that Nienhuis produced until 1912, he worked with simple abstracted natural ornaments in both decoration and form. He has mainly worked with gold, precious stones and enamel. His jewelery is considered part of Dutch Art Nouveau.

In 1912 Nienhuis exchanged Haarlem for Hagen in Germany, where he became a teacher at a newly established Kunstgewerbeschule. He was given his own studio and plenty of room to experiment with new materials and techniques. He made ceramic sculptures, among other things. In 1916 he returned to the Netherlands, partly because of the First World War, and a year later became a teacher at Quellinus, to which he would remain connected until his retirement in 1934. As a self-employed potter, he made unique pieces at this time, with characteristic simple shapes.