He corresponded with other naturalists including James Petiver, William Sherrard and Hans Sloane and was famous for maintaining a garden with interesting plants from the colonies.
The wealthy Huguenot family was in the cloth and silk trade and Charles inherited his father's home at Mitcham, Surrey, where he had a garden filled with the newest exotics at that time in course of introduction.
In 1734 he and a clerk named Tullidge were implicated in monetary losses arising from accepting security notes instead of cash from traders.
His dried plants occupy seventy-four folio volumes, the entire number of specimens being about thirteen thousand, and are in excellent preservation; they form part of the herbarium at the Oxford Botanic Garden.
Dubois obtained rice seed from India which was introduced into British South Carolina in 1766 through a Thomas Marsh.