He is known for the first synthesis of the economically important dye, alizarin, with Liebermann, and for contributing to the fundamental nomenclature of organic chemistry.

Later he worked for the chemical company Meister Lucius und Brüning (today Hoechst AG).

Carl Graebe received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1862 under the supervision of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen.

Alizarin had been isolated from madder root some forty years earlier in 1826 by the French chemist Pierre Robiquet.

Its chemical synthesis was a milestone in the development of the German and international dye industry, and foreshadowed collapse of the French agricultural sector that produced madder root (after synthesis became the more economical means of producing alizarin).