Charles William Dabney was born to Robert L. and Lavinia (Morrison) Dabney in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia on June 19, 1855. He earned his A. B. at Hampden-Sydney College (1879) and studied at the University of Virginia (1874-1877) before earning his PhD from the University of Göttingen in Germany (1880). He was later awarded honorary LL. D. degrees from Davidson College (1889), Washington and Lee University (1900) Yale University (1901), John Hopkins University (1902), and the University of Cincinnati (1937). Dabney married Mary Brent (1864-1925) on August 24, 1881 and the couple had no known children. Charles Dabney began his professional career as a Professor of Chemistry at Emory and Henry College (1877-1879) and worked as a Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina (1880-1881) and as the Director of the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station (1880-1887) before coming to the University of Tennessee. Here, he served as a Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Director of the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station (1887-1890) as well as holding the Presidency of the University (1887-1904).

Dabney is often credited with turning the University of Tennessee into a university in fact as well as name. Convinced that the institution had become too hidebound, he dismissed nearly all of the existing faculty and hired a replacement faculty of nearly double the size. He redesigned the curriculum, abolishing the preparatory school and subsuming all undergraduate course offerings under a College of Agriculture, Mechanic Arts and Sciences. He later helped to organize the Summer School of the South, which was designed to train teachers and so increase educational quality across the nation. Dabney also dismantled the strict military regime that had previously prevailed on campus, admitted the first female students in 1893, and campaigned for free schools for all children regardless of race.

Many of the Trustees, however, were not happy with Dabney's reforms, with some feeling that he had begun to overstep his authority. Disappointed, Dabney left U. T. to assume the Presidency of the University of Cincinnati in 1904. He retired in 1920 and went on to write his major work, Universal Education in the South (1936). Charles Dabney died on June 15, 1945.