Born in 1858 in Edenton, North Carolina, Henry Edward Manning was one of four siblings born to Alfred and Eliza (Allston) Manning. He moved with his family to New Haven as a child. Manning attended public school in Fair Haven and studied art with a private tutor. Several maternal uncles worked as custodians at Yale, including Osborn and Isom Allston. His brother, John Wesley Manning, graduated from Yale College in 1881. A nephew, William Edward Beardsley Manning, attended the Yale School of Art from 1912 to 1914.
After receiving his certificate from Yale Art School in 1883, Henry Edward Manning taught drawing in a public school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. In 1887, he began working as a sign painter in Knoxville. Around 1890, he returned to New Haven and continued in the sign painting business. Sometime around 1904, he married Allie M. Warwick; she died in 1917. As of that year, Manning lived at 550 Orchard Street in New Haven and was employed independently as a sign painter. He died in 1925 in New Haven.