Brown studied forestry, systematic botany, and ecology at the University of Michigan in 1902, receiving his master's degree in 1903. Early in his career, Brown studied plant distribution on the flood plain of the Huron River in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
He worked for the United States Forest Service before joining Ohio State University as professor of botany. Brown pursued further research on Hawaiian trees at Yale University for two years and received his Ph.D. in 1918. He married biologist Elizabeth Dorothy Wuist on August 20 of the same year, and the two of them performed two years of field work on the Bernice P. Bishop MuseumBayard Dominick Expedition[2] to the Marquesas Islands (1921–1922), along with ethnologist Edward S. Handy and archeologist Ralph Lauton.[3] Brown and his wife also visited the Tuamotu archipelago and New Zealand where they collected 9000 dried plant and 120 wood samples.[4] In 1920, Brown was a research fellow at Yale when he became a staff botanist for the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. His wife joined him at the Bishop Museum as a research associate in cryptogamic botany.[5]
Brown, Forest Buffen Harknes (1922). "The Secondary Xylem of Hawaiian Trees". Occasional Papers of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History. 8 (6). Honolulu, Hawaii: Bishop Museum Press.
Brown, Flora of Southeastern Polynesia. Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu 1931-35. (3 volumes)
^Gregory, Herbert E. (1923). "Report of the Director for 1922". Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin. 4. Herbert E. Gregory, Yale geologist and director of the Bishop Museum at the time described Brown in 1922: "Forest B. H. Brown, Botanist, returned to Honolulu on December 16, 1922, after a period of two years spent in the Marquesas and neighboring parts of the Pacific as a member of the Bayard Dominick Expedition. His work has resulted in filling a conspicuous gap in the knowledge of Pacific flora and should lead to the preparation of a standard treatise based on his collections, which comprise 9000 sheets of material and 395 photographs. During the year a paper by Mr. Brown on "The secondary xylem of Hawaiian trees" (Occasional Papers. Vol. VIII, No. 6) was issued by the Museum."
