In 1966, his family moved to Auckland where he attended Sacred Heart College in Glen Innes, counting among his classmates the future founding members of NZ's iconic rock band Split Enz.
While studying languages (English, French and German) at Waikato University in Hamilton from 1971 to 1972, classical piano became his passion as he began to perform in lunchtime concerts on campus.
With a Queen Elizabeth Arts Council grant and a French Government scholarship, Grice left New Zealand in October 1976 to further his piano studies in Paris with Yvonne Loriod, obtaining the Licence de Concert at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Musique in 1978 in the class of Germaine Mounier.
Other formative influences came from intensive classes in Israel with Enrique Barenboim from 1979 to 1980, from the coaching of the American pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen and later from the French/Argentine pianist Florencia Raitzin-Legrand.
He has premiered contemporary works by composers from New Zealand, Jenny McLeod (seven Tone Clock Pieces, in 1988), Lucien Johnson (To the sea, in 2007, Addis Nocturnes, in 2017) Nigel Keay (the dancer leads the procession, in 2007), France (Kirill Zaborov and David Chaillou), and Japan (Karen Tanaka).