Leonard Merrick was born as Leonard Miller in London. He studied law at Heidelberg, Germany. At the age of eighteen he had to travel to South Africa after his father suffered a serious financial loss. In South Africa he worked as an overseer in a diamond mine and in a sollicitors office. He returned to London in the late 1880s and worked as an actor and actormanager. He legally changed his name to Leonard Merrick in 1892.