Rice was born in
Brighton, Massachusetts to Edmund Rice and Martha A. Rice, née Fletcher. His father gained wealth in the wholesale meat business and provided a superior education for his sons, two of whom fought in the
U.S. Civil War. He arranged a private music tutor for the eight-year-old Edward; after a year's tuition, the boy could not read music but could improvise fluently,
playing by ear. Some years later, his father offered to send him to Europe for another attempt at a musical education, but
B. J. Lang, a leading Boston organist, advised against it, saying the world wants songs, not more sonatas. Rice was first employed in printing and publishing, and for a while managed a newspaper. By the 1870s he was
amanuensis for James Alexander, Boston agent for the
Cunard Steamship Company, and was a member of Boston's
Papyrus Club. In one version of how he began composing for musical comedy, he and
J. Cheever Goodwin saw the
Lydia Thompson production of
Farnie and
Reece's
burlesque Oxygen, and agreed that they could do better. In 1874 Rice and Goodwin created an
extravaganza,
Evangeline; or, The Belle of Acadia, a musical burlesque of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's
Evangeline, that became the first American production billed as a musical comedy. Rice composed the music for more than eighteen productions that appeared on Broadway, including
Hiawatha and
Summer Nights, that toured the country. Rice had no formal musical education and he could not read sheet music, but he played by ear on the piano. His method of composition would be to "dictate" to a scribe tunes that he would play on the piano, and he would make suggestions for orchestration. Rice's biggest hit was 1894's
Adonis, which starred
Henry Dixey, one of the most popular performers of the era. He produced the
burlesque extravaganza musical
1492 Up to Date in 1893 in New York City. His final Broadway production was a 1904 revival of the British musical
Mr. Wix of Wickham, with new songs by
Jerome Kern. Rice died at the age of 76 in New York City. ==Genealogy and family relations==