He was the son of István Széchenyi and was in charge of the State Fire Brigade in Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

His father was Count István Széchenyi and his mother was Countess Crescencia von Seilern und Aspang.

In 1869, he recruited the National Gymnastics Association to able to begin training with the fire truck he purchased in London.

Count Ödön Széchenyi became the first president of the Hungarian National Fire Brigade Association, which was established in the early 1870s.

Although Széchenyi was in favor of the introduction of a volunteer fire brigade and worked hard to organize a volunteer fire brigade, from the very beginning of his movement he believed that a firefighter and a mechanic should be paid and a team of six should be hired to clean the machines.

As Széchenyi was there, he offered to help set up professional and voluntary fire brigades based on his Hungarian model.

At the beginning of 1874, the foreign embassies were very strongly advocating the establishment of a fire brigade, and decided their candidate was Széchenyi, whose name was known throughout Europe by that time.

Seeing the precise and customary practice of the disciplined military team, the sultan instructed Széchenyi to set up the Turkish fire brigade in his organization, following the Hungarian model.

[3] His marriage began to deteriorate, eventually Count Ödön Széchenyi moved to the Ottoman Empire and his wife and children to Vienna.