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William Arnold Bromfield was born in the New Forest on the 4th July 1801, the only son of the priest, John Arnold Bromfield (c.1770-1801) and the grandson of the physician and Royal Society fellow, Robert Bromfield (d. 1786). Aged 20 he entered Glasgow University studying medicine. In this period anyone wishing to practise medicine had to be licensed by the Society of Apothecaries and for this knowledge of herbs and medicinal use was essential. In order to attain this knowledge Bromfield studied under the then Professor of Botany of Glasgow, Sir William Hooker.
Upon his father's death, Bromfield gained an inheritance that would fund his subsequent botanic research and travel, which lead to him not pursuing a career in medicine. After graduating in 1826 he travelled on the Continent in France, Germany and Italy before returning and setting up home with his sister. The pair finally settled in Ryde in 1836.
A preliminary version of Bromfield's Flora Hantoniensis was published in the New Physiologist between 1848 and 1850, though he never considered his flora for the Isle of Wight, the Flora Vectensis to be ready for publication. He continued to travel widely, visiting Ireland in 1842, the West Indies in 1844 and North America in 1846. His observations on climate and plant life in the USA were in fact used in Hooker's Journal of Botany (1848-1849). Finally in 1850 Bromfield journeyed East, to Egypt and Syria. Letters written to his sister from this period were posthumously published, following Bromfield's death from typhus in Damascus on October 9th 1851.