Henry Clay Frick was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania of German-Swiss ancestry. Though his parents did not have much money, his grandfather, Abraham Overholt, was a wealthy rye whiskey distiller. While Frick was still a boy Overholt gave him a job as bookkeeper. From that moment on Frick worked hard to attain his goal of becoming a millionaire. By the age of 30 he had succeeded.

Frick had built his own industrial empire by manufacturing coke, which was an ideal product for Bessemer conversion. Andrew Carnegie, one of "Coke King" Frick's best customers, soon decided that a merger would be beneficial to both of them, and they entered into a partnership in 1881. It was a move that Frick would regret for the rest of his life, despite the additional wealth it brought him.

First, Frick lost control of his own company when Carnegie became majority stockholder. Friction between the two partners increased as Carnegie strived to maintain his reputation as a pro-labor industrialist and Frick continued to practice his ruthless suppression of strikes. Though Carnegie had put Frick in charge of the Homestead works during the 1892 contract negotiations and privately supported his every action, he later publicly blamed Frick for the violence on July 6.

In 1899 Frick resigned from the board of Carnegie Steel. After Carnegie tried to force him into selling his stock far below the market value, the two men entered a brief court fight, settled, and never met again. Frick moved to New York where he took up golf and added to his art collection. He lived there alone until his death in 1919.

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