The son of Maria de Regla Aristi Guerrero and Hipolito Billini Hernandez, his grandfather Juan Antonio Billini Ruse, a native of Piedmont, Italy, arrived on the island of Santo Domingo with the 1802 French troops commanded by General Charles Leclerc (Napoleon's brother in law) in order to reassert control over a slave rebellion on the western side of the island (now Haiti), eventually capturing and deporting Toussaint Louverture.

Motivated by his militancy in the Blue Party and his conviction that the country should preserve its independence, he participated at the age of 21 in the Dominican Restoration War, that ended in 1865.

In 1884, after a close electoral contest in which he beat Casimiro Nemesio de Moya, he was elected President of the Republic.

His last words as president were:I think it is a good example to be giving my resignation spontaneously and disappearing into the shadows of my house, without petty aspirations for the future.He founded the newspaper El Eco de la Opinion (March 1879), which circulated for over twenty years and became the paradigm of a thoughtful journalism combined with detailed news reviews.

Before he was president, he published the novel Amor y Expiacion in 1882, however the most important contributions of Billini to the Dominican national literature is the novel Baní or Engracia and Antoñita (1892), which prosecutes the political-social behavior and customs of nineteenth-century banilejos.