He was the son of Humphrey III de Bohun and Margaret of Huntingdon, daughter of Henry of Scotland, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, a son of David I of Scotland. His paternal grandmother was Margaret of Hereford, eldest daughter of Miles de Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford and Constable of England.
He was Earl of Hereford and Hereditary Constable of England from 1199 to 1220. The male line of Miles of Gloucester having failed, on the accession of King John of England, Bohun was created Earl of Hereford and Constable of England (1199). The lands of the family lay chiefly on the Welsh Marches, and from this date the Bohuns took a foremost place among the Marcher barons.
Henry de Bohun figured with the earls of Clare and Gloucester among the twenty-five barons who were elected by their fellows to enforce the terms of the Magna Carta in 1215, and was subsequently excommunicated by the Pope.
In the civil war that followed the Magna Carta, he was also a supporter of King Louis VIII of France and was captured at the Battle of Lincoln in 1217. He died while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
