The problem of maintaining a representation of a dynamic graph as long as a certain property is satisfied has recently been considered for a number of properties. This paper presents an optimal algorithm for this problem on vertex-dynamic connected distance hereditary graphs: both vertex insertion and deletion have complexity $O(d)$, where $d$ is the degree of the vertex involved in the modification. Our vertex-dynamic algorithm is competitive with the existing linear time recognition algorithms of distance hereditary graphs, and is also simpler. Besides, we get a constant time edge-dynamic recognition algorithm. To achieve this, we revisit the split decomposition by introducing graph-labelled trees. Doing so, we are also able to derive an intersection model for distance hereditary graphs, which answers an open problem.