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Edmund Ignatius Rice was born on 1 June 1762 at Westcourt, near Callan in County Kilkenny, Ireland, the fourth of seven sons of Robert Rice and Margaret Tierney Rice. He grew up in a relatively prosperous Catholic farming family under the Penal Laws, which restricted Catholic landholding, education, and public life. He received elementary instruction at a local hedge school and further schooling in Kilkenny before being apprenticed in his late teens to his uncle Michael Rice, a merchant and ship's chandler in the port of Waterford. Edmund proved a capable businessman, eventually taking over and expanding the firm as a provision merchant. In 1785 he married Mary Elliott, daughter of a Waterford businessman. The marriage was short: Mary died in January 1789, leaving him a widower with an infant daughter who had a developmental disability.

That bereavement redirected his life. He continued to provide for his daughter, who was largely raised by her mother's family, while adopting a more intense religious practice, including daily Mass and charitable work among Waterford's poor. Confronted by the lack of schooling available to Catholic boys, who remained disadvantaged by law and poverty, he was influenced by the example of Nano Nagle and the Presentation Sisters. In 1802 he disposed of his commercial interests and opened a free school for poor boys in a converted stable on New Street in Waterford, later establishing a lasting house at Mount Sion. Companions joined him in a shared life of prayer and teaching.

In 1808 Rice and his companions took religious vows as a community of lay brothers devoted to the education of the poor. The institute received papal approval in 1820 as the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Ireland, known as the Christian Brothers; a related group that remained under diocesan rather than pontifical authority developed into the Presentation Brothers. As superior general, Rice oversaw the founding of schools in several Irish towns and the extension of the work to England. The brothers offered free elementary education that combined religious instruction with literacy and practical skills at a time when such provision for poor Catholic boys was scarce.

Rice resigned as superior general in 1838 because of failing health and spent his last years at Mount Sion in Waterford. He died there on 29 August 1844 and was buried in the monastery cemetery; his remains were later enshrined in a chapel at Mount Sion. The congregations he founded continued to expand after his death and became major providers of Catholic education in Ireland, Britain, Australia, North America, and elsewhere. Pope John Paul II beatified him in Rome on 6 October 1996. His liturgical memorial is kept on 5 May.

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