Ernest Brown was born September 8, 1877 in Middlesborough, Yorkshire, England. He studied photography in Newcastle-on-Tyne. He married Mary (Molly) Carr in 1902. Their daughter Winnifred (Dolly) was born and died in 1905, and their son Alan was born in 1909. Ernest set out for Canada in 1903, spending some time in Toronto, but being unable to find work. He heard of a job taking care of a studio in Edmonton for C.W. Mathers and moved out to Edmonton in 1904.

Brown worked as an assistant for C.W. Mathers, Edmonton's first photographer, and shortly afterwards bought the rights to Mathers' portrait studio (he purchased the rest of Mather's business, the "views", in 1907) and in 1905 the studio expanded into the Ernest Brown Company Ltd. In 1912, his new building, the Ernest Brown Block, was opened. After the First World War, Brown's business was seized in 1920. He ran as a candidate for the Independent Labour Party in 1921 and published a short-run reformist newspaper called The Glow Worm.

In 1926 he moved to Vegreville where took over the Vegreville photographic studio, which was primarily run by an assistant. His focus had changed to trying to promote and sell images from his collections. He returned to Edmonton in 1929. From 1933 until 1939, Brown operated the Pioneer Days Museum in Edmonton. In 1947, he sold his photographic collections that he'd collected over this lifetime to the Alberta Government for $50,000. Ernest Brown died January 3, 1951 and is buried in Seventh Avenue Cemetery.