Chamberlain was born in Southsea (a part of Portsmouth) on the south coast of England, the son of an Admiral William Charles Chamberlain and his wife Eliza Hall, the daughter of the travel writer Basil Hall.
They had 3 children, Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935), a Japanologist, Henry Chamberlain (1853–1923), a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), the natural historian and author (more accurately described in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a "racialist writer").
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