He studied painting early on with his father, the Naturalist painter Henri Biva.

In 1845, motivated by the fashion of the time for bourgeois interior ornamentation, Charles Biva opened a wallpaper factory in a northern suburb of Paris where his sons Henri and Paul began their apprenticeship as designers and colorists.

Other exhibition venues that saw his participation during this period included Salon des Indépendants in 1909.

In 1903, the Bulletin de la Société des amis des arts du département de l'Eure[5] Henry Chantraine evokes the Exposition des beaux-arts d’Evreux: "Passing in front of the Dahlias with its rich impasto and the Village, with violent tones, but already much more moderate [than those of Lucien Lamarre, mentioned above by the columnist] of MM.

In New York, when he exhibited at the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists,[6] he was cited with other artists in the columns of New York Times (10 March 1922) as "stamped all over with the stamp of independence".

World War I had just ended, but his younger brother, jewelry designer Marius Biva, also formed at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, died at Verdun in 1915 at the age of 25 years.

Lucien Biva became an American citizen in 1928, residing mostly in New York City, Brooklyn, Queens, White Plains and Catskill.

D-59,177 issued to Lucien Biva on Oct. 4, 1921 discloses a design for a Textile Fabric or similar article wherein the material is gathered and apparently sewn along straight seams at regular intervals to create a rippled or wrinkled appearance.