Henry Augustus Ward was born on March 9, 1834, in Rochester, New York.

He was a naturalist, geologist, and explorer. He attended Williams College and the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, where he was an assistant of Louis Agassiz. After college, Ward travelled to Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine and studied at the Jardin des Plantes, the Sorbonne, the School of Mines in Paris, and at the universities of Munich and Freiberg. He also travelled in West Africa and the West Indies, collecting geological specimens. From 1860 to 1865, he taught natural science at the University of Rochester. He founded Ward's Natural Science Establishment, the internationally known supplier of scientific educational materials to colleges and universities. Ward later became interested in meteorites and built up a large collection.

In 1860, he married Phoebe H. Ward (1832–1891), and in 1897, he remarried Lydia Arms Avery (1845–1924). He died after being struck by an automobile on July 4, 1906, in Buffalo, New York.