When Harrison VI became a young adult, his father lost a considerable amount of property, supposedly due to his lack of mercantile skills, and sent his son away to the Philadelphia-based firm Willing and Morris, where he earned an exceptional mercantile education, and befriended Robert Morris and Thomas Willing, the firm's owners.

However, the American Revolutionary War prompted him to return home to Virginia, as he strongly wanted to aid his father and the Patriot cause.

In 1790, he took over the ownership of Berkeley Plantation from his aging father, and began a large-scale renovation, adding handsome Adam woodwork and the double arches of the "Great Rooms" inside the mansion.

In 1799, after years of hard work and success, Benjamin Harrison VI died in Charles City, Virginia, at the age of 44.

After his first wife’s death he married a woman called Anna Mercer (1760–1787), who died in 1787, days after giving birth to a son, Benjamin Harrison VII (1787–1842).

Benjamin Harrison VI's accomplishments, compared to his father's, his brother's, and his grandnephew's, have been less prominent in the annals of American history.