Charles Scott Venable was born on April 19, 1827, in Farmville, Virginia.

He was a mathematician, astronomer, educator, and military officer. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1842 and served as a mathematics tutor at the college (1846–1856). He continued his studies at the University of Georgia (1856–1857) and the University of South Carolina (1857–1862). He served as an aide-de-camp to Confederate general Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War (1861–1865), starting as Major and promoted to Lieutenant colonel. In 1865, Venable accepted the position of Professor in Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Virginia and served twice as chairman of the faculty (1870–1873, 1886–1888). During his tenure, he helped secure critical public and private funding for the university and pushed for the expansion of the university’s course offerings in the sciences. In 1885, a large financial gift went toward a domed observatory and refractor telescope, the second largest of its kind in the world. Venable taught the University of Virginia’s first woman student in 1893 but voted against coeducation the next year.

In 1856, he married Margaret Cantey McDowell (1836–1874), and in 1876, he remarried Mary Martha Southall Brown (1834–1920). He died on August 11, 1900, in Charlottesville, Virginia.