Lucius Lee Hubbard was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 7, 1849. Hubbard was a posthumous child: his father, Lucius Virgilius Hubbard, had died of cholera in New Orleans several months earlier. Annie Elizabeth (Lee) Hubbard raised their son alone for several years before marrying John Kirk in 1854.

Hubbard attended elementary and secondary schools in Cincinnati for most of his youth before studying at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. In 1872, he graduated from Harvard University, his father’s alma mater, and departed for Europe to further his studies in law in Bonn, Germany. After returning to the United States and earning a degree from the Boston School of Law in 1875, Hubbard focused his efforts on practicing law and growing his business interests, but his professional pursuits shifted to science in the early 1880s. Between 1883 and 1886, he once again studied at Bonn and then Heidelberg University, obtaining advanced degrees with emphasis on petrology, chemistry, and mineralogy.

In 1890, following several years of collecting mineralogical specimens, Hubbard was offered a position with the well-established Michigan Geological Survey and the upstart Michigan Mining School. He accepted and relocated from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Houghton County. In 1893, he became State Geologist, a position he held until his resignation in 1899. After some consulting work on behalf of the new Copper Range Company, Hubbard was hired as General Manager of the Champion Mine in Painesdale, where he worked for a few years before moving to the Ojibway mine.

From 1905 to 1917, Hubbard sat on the board of control of the Michigan College of Mines; from 1911 to 1933, he served as a Regent of the University of Michigan. He wrote prolifically about topics in geology, mineralogy, and law, as well as his personal interests in stamps, Maine, and literature.

Hubbard married Frances Lambard, a native of Maine, on September 29, 1875. The Hubbards had five children: Charlotte, Lucius, an infant who died at one day old, Frances, and Julia. Frances Lambard Hubbard predeceased her husband on August 16, 1927. Lucius Hubbard split his last years between the Keweenaw Peninsula and warmer climes. He died in Eagle Harbor on August 7, 1933, just days before his 84th birthday.