Smith studied piano in Leipzig with Ignaz Moscheles and Louis Plaidy, cello with Friedrich Grützmacher, and composition with Julius Rietz.
[1] He returned to England in 1858, settling the following year in London, where he married Annie Birch and remained until his death, highly regarded as a teacher and composer.
[citation needed] Smith's earliest compositions are piano accompaniments to three concertina pieces by Richard Blagrove.
Amongst his best known works are Le Jet d'eau was used as the theme for The Foley Family, a drama serial about the comic lives of a Dublin family, which ran on Radio Éireann (the former name of the Irish national radio service) from 1952 to the late 1960s.
He wrote many other morceaux de salon for piano solo and made many arrangements from popular operas.