He was the second of four sons of Susan Cornelia Clarke (1825-1901) and Samuel Denis Warren (1817-1888), a wealthy paper manufacturer in Boston, who died in 1888. He had four siblings: Cornelia Lyman Warren, philanthropist; Samuel D. Warren II (1854-1899), businessperson; Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928), art collector; Fredrick Fiske Warren (1862-1938), political radical and utopist.^[1] A fall as a young boy caused a spine injury which left him impaired for the rest of his life. He graduated in 1879 with an A.B. from Harvard University, and followed it up with studies at Johns Hopkins University under Lanman and Maurice Bloomfield, and at Oxford University with T. W. Rhys Davids. He purchased the house of Charles Beck in 1891, and lived in it until his death in 1899 at which he bequeathed it, along with the bulk of his estate, to Harvard University; the building is now known as the Beck-Warren House (or Warren House).

His work Buddhism in Translation (1896) and translation (along with Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi) of the Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosa (1950) respectively appeared as Volume 3 and Volume 41 of the Harvard Oriental Series.^[2]

• Obituary: Lanman, C. R.; Henry Clarke Warren (1854-1899): A Brief Memorial; Buddhist Annual of Ceylon, Vol I (1920), No. 2, p. 28-32

• Harvard Oriental Series
• Works by or about Henry Clarke Warren at Internet Archive
• Works by Henry Clarke Warren at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)