Daniel Mackintosh was born in 1815 in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Scotland.
He was a Scottish geomorphologist and ethnologist. About 1845 he left Scotland for the south of England to become a successful lecturer at various public institutions and schools on astronomy, geology, physical geology, and ethnology. He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1861. He contributed numerous papers to the Society on Surface Sculpture, the Geological Magazine, and other scientific publications. In 1881, he was presented with the Kingsley Memorial Medal of the Chester Society of Natural Science, and in 1886, he was awarded the proceeds of the balance of the Lyell Fund by the Geological Society, in recognition of his studies of the glacial and other superficial deposits of the north-west of England. He also served as president of the Liverpool Geological Society (1881-1883).
In 1854, he married Ellen Knight (c. 1827-). He died on July 19, 1891, and is buried in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England.