Richard Edmond Bennett was born February 20, 1946, in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, to Evelyn Frances Simpson Bennett and Clifford Jones Bennett. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Texas between 1967 and 1969. He married Patricia Dyer and has five children. He received his Ph.D in United States intellectual history at Wayne State University. He then worked as head of University of Manitoba Special Collections from 1978 to 1997, before moving to Brigham Young University to work as a professor of Church History and Doctrine. He is the author of several books and articles on the history of the Church, Joseph Smith, and the Mormon Exodus, and served as editor for BYU Studies and associate editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. In 2020, Richard and Patricia were called to serve as the directors of the Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters.