Henry Carvill Lewis was born on November 16, 1853, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He was an American geologist and mineralogist. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., 1876) and became affiliated with the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania in 1879. For the next three years, he served as a volunteer member and became interested in the study of glacial phenomena. In 1880, he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and in 1883, he became the Chair of Geology in Haverford College, Pennsylvania. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1881. During the winters from 1885 to 1887, he studied petrology under Prof. H.F. Rosenbusch in Heidelberg, Germany, and during the summers he investigated the glacial geology of northern Europe and the British Isles. His observations in North America had demonstrated the former extension of land-ice, and the existence of great terminal moraines and were published in his "Report on the Terminal Moraine in Pennsylvania and Western New York" (1884). The results of his observations in Britain were published posthumously in 1894 entitled "Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland."

In 1882, he married Julia Catharine Foulke (1856–1924). He died on July 21, 1888, in Manchester, England.