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Henry Francis Keyes was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on July 21, 1879 to Charles Gilman and Juliet A. Keyes. He attended the Roxbury Latin school and graduated from Harvard in 1901. He also attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating from that institution in 1904. Keyes began practice as an architect in New York with Herbert D. Hale in 1905 before returning to Boston in 1907 where he worked with Guy Lowell. Keyes established his own firm shortly thereafter. He worked on a number of projects in the Boston area, the best known being the present day "New England Fish Pier," designed in 1914. Keyes married in June 15, 1905 to Marian Brewer Call, and the couple had two children, Elisabeth Brewer, born on January 7, 1908, and Juliet Frances, born February 21, 1913. The family made their home on Penniman Road in Brookline, Massachusetts at least until 1930. Henry Keyes died in 1933.

In the summer of 1899, Henry Keyes and twelve other Harvard students went on an expedition sponsored by the Harvard Summer School of Geology and led by instructor Jay Backus Woodworth in cooperation with Professor Nathaniel Shaler. Other students were Samuel W. Duncan, Corey C. Brayton, Burt Z. Kasson, Roger Flint, Robert W. Sayles, Carl C. Shippee, Edwin M. Brush, George A. Hathaway, Albert P. Chittenden, Marcus L. Goldman, Howard Lane Blackwell, and Samuel C. Wiel. Keyes traveled by train to Buffalo, New York on July 4, and from that point took a steamship North Land through lakes Erie, Huron, and Superior before landing at Duluth, Minnesota on July 7. The next day they took the train to Bozeman, Montana where they arrived on July 11. On July 13 they left to begin their hike at the Peter LeBeau ranch near present day Gallatin Gateway. There contractors Jack Bean and Edward C. Alderson loaded mules with supplies for their journey into southwest Montana. The Harvard men hiked for the entire trip which took a circuitous route to the park through the Gallatin Canyon, Lone Peak, Jack Creek, Ennis, Virginia City, the Red Rock lakes, Henry's Lake, and entering Yellowstone on August 2. They went up the Madison River to the geyser basins where, on August 5, Henry Keyes scalded his foot after breaking through the thin crust above a hot spring. Keyes and Shippee followed the hikers by stagecoach to the Canyon Hotel, but were forced to leave the expedition on August 13 due to Henry's injury.