Henry Bolingbroke Woodward was born on November 24, 1832, in Norwich, England.

He was a geologist and paleontologist known for his research on fossil crustaceans and other arthropods. He was educated at Norwich Grammar School. He became assistant in the Department of Geology at the British Museum in 1858 and in 1880, Keeper of that department, a position he held until 1901. In 1864, he co-founded and served as an editor of the Geological Magazine until 1918. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1873 and received the honorary degree of LL.D. from St. Andrews University in 1878. Woodward served as president of the Geological Society of London (1894–1896) and was awarded the Murchison Medal in 1884 and Wollaston Medal in 1906. He was president of the Geologists' Association (1873-1874), the Malacological Society (1893–1895), the Museums Association (1900), and the Paleontographical Society (1895). Woodward's collections of shells, manuscripts, and casts of fossil vertebrates can be found in the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology. He published " A Monograph of the British Fossil Crustacea, Order Merostomata" (1866-1878), "A Monograph of Carboniferous Trilobites" (1883-1884), and many articles in scientific journals.

In 1857, he married Ellen Sophia Page (1836–1913). He died on September 6, 1921, in Bushey, England.