Herman Daly was born on July 21, 1938 in Houston, Texas, USA. He was married to Marcia Damasceno. He died on October 28, 2022 in Richmond, Virginia, USA.
He majored in economics at Rice University, where he received a bachelor's degree, and earned a PhD in economics at Vanderbilt University.
He is widely regarded as one of the founders of ecological economics.
He taught economics for two decades at Louisiana State University. He was a senior economist at the World Bank from 1988 to 1994 before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland.