Charles William Dabney was born on July 19, 1855, in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia to Robert Lewis and Lavinia Morrison Dabney. He completed his undergraduate education at Hampden-Sydney College and continued on to the University of Virginia, graduating with his Master's degree in chemistry in 1877. He taught for a year at Emory and Henry College, but later left and enrolled in the University of Goettingen, Germany in 1878 to continue his education. He graduated with his PhD in 1880 and returned to the United States. Dabney settled in North Carolina, married Mary Chilton Brent, and began working as the director of the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station.

Dabney became president of the University of Tennessee in 1887. Frustrated with what he considered the University's reactionary nature, he quickly embarked on a campaign of radical reform. He made agricultural and mechanical courses mandatory, added six new four-year courses in science, updated the physics curriculum, admitted the University's first female students, began the Summer School of the South, ended the military regimen, doubled the size of the faculty, and formed both the home economics and law departments. Dabney left the University of Tennessee to take office as President of the University of Cincinnati in 1904. He died on June 15, 1945.