After selling his stock in Carnegie Steel, he devoted a great deal of his time and money to philanthropic works.

His English parents, Henry Phipps, a shoemaker,[2] and Hannah (née Franks),[3] were married at Wolverhampton in 1824[4] and had at least one son born while they were still in England.

William Henry Phipps was born on 27 March 1825 and baptized at Wellington, Shropshire, England, on 18 August 1830.

[7] Phipps began working as a young man as an office boy and later a bookkeeper with Dillworth & Bidwell.

[6] In 1865, Phipps became a partner with childhood friends and neighbors Andrew (1835–1919) and Thomas Carnegie's (1843–1886) Union Iron Mills.

[8] Kloman and Phipps at first refused, but Thomas Carnegie made an offer of all the shares in Cyclops plus an additional payment of $50,000 (equivalent to $1,027,000 in 2024).

[18] At one time, he and his family owned one-third of the town of Palm Beach, 28 miles (approximately 45 kilometers) of oceanfront between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, prime bay front property in downtown Miami, and 29,653 acres (approximately 12,000 hectares) of land in Martin County.

Phipps believed that those who have achieved great wealth should give back for the public good and create institutions dedicated to that purpose.

[22] He was involved with a number of philanthropic causes, the best known of which is the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Schenley Park, an 1893 gift to the city of Pittsburgh.

Among his many benevolent works, he also funded the Phipps Institute for the Study, Treatment and Prevention of Tuberculosis[23] at the University of Pennsylvania.

[24] Another major project was funding The Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital.