His father gained wealth in the wholesale meat business and provided a superior education for his sons, two of whom fought in the U.S. Civil War.

Some years later, his father offered to send him to Europe for another attempt at a musical education, but B. J. Lang, a leading Boston organist, advised against it, saying the world wants songs, not more sonatas.

In one version of how he began composing for musical comedy, he and J. Cheever Goodwin saw the Lydia Thompson production of Farnie and Reece's burlesque Oxygen, and agreed that they could do better.

[4][5] Rice composed the music for more than eighteen productions that appeared on Broadway, including Hiawatha and Summer Nights, that toured the country.

[3] As a producer, Rice introduced popular performers Pauline Hall, Lillian Russell, and Fay Templeton, and in 1898, he booked Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk by Will Marion Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the earliest musicals by African Americans and the first to appear on Broadway at the prestigious Casino Theatre.