Luke Howard was born in 1772, the son of an inventive tinsmith, Robert Howard, who introduced the newest technology Argand oil lamps to this country. However, Luke's interests were chemistry in its widest sense. He was apprenticed to a Stockport chemist and druggist, Ollive Sims. Whilst serving his apprenticeship, he also studied chemistry, botany and French. Luke's father encouraged him in his studies, writing:

"Chemistry is a noble science and becomes useful in many sorts of business as well as a lasting source of amusement."

Having completed his apprenticeship, Luke took a post with a wholesale druggist in London. Soon after, in 1795, Robert provided his son, aged 23, with the money to set up his own business, as a chemist and druggist on Fleet Street. In 1796, Luke married Mariabella Eliot. Luke then accepted a partnership with William Allen of the Plough Court pharmacy in Lombard Street. Luke developed the manufacturing side of the business, producing chemicals in Plaistow and then Stratford, East London. From 1807, Luke ran his own business. He pioneered the supply of quinine, newly isolated in France by Pelletier and Caventou in 1820.

Luke left the laboratories in the capable hands of his son, John Eliot, and his staff, while he devoted his time to botany and meteorology. His papers on botany led to his election as a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1802. His research on meteorology was at the forefront of that branch of science, and he is known as the "Father of Meteorology". Based on information that he collected on his journey from Plaistow to his London laboratory, he kept a daily record of London's weather from 1806 to 1830, which he published as Climate of London, in three volumes. His "Notes on the Modifications of the Clouds", his observations on cloud formations, illustrated with his own watercolours, were first published in 1803 in the Philosophical Magazine.

It was Luke Howard who invented the terms for types of clouds, such as cirrus, stratus and cumulus that are in common usage today. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1821. He was also a friend of the German philosopher Goethe, who dedicated two poems to Howard.

Luke Howard died, aged 92, in 1864. However, his business, Howard and Sons of Ilford, Essex, continued in the family for five generations.