Lewis Lindsay Dyche was born on March 20, 1857 in Bath, Virginia (what is now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia). His family moved to Kansas and settled near the town of Ridgeway, which was south of Topeka and is no longer in existence. He graduated from the State Normal School in Emporia in 1877.

Dyche joined the faculty of the University of Kansas as an Instructor of Natural History in the fall of 1882. By 1884 he received Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Sciences degrees. In 1887 he went to New York to study taxidermy under conservationist William T. Hornaday. Dyche then became a Professor of Systematic Zoology in 1889.

Dyche became world renowned at the 1893 Colombian Exposition (World's Fair) in Chicago when he displayed his collection of taxidermied animals from around the globe for the Kansas pavilion diorama. These animals constituted the beginning of the Museum of Natural History at KU. The collections he gathered from his many travels were also the beginnings of the collections at KU's Museum of Anthropology.

In 1910, Dyche became the Kansas Fish and Game Warden. During his time as the warden he enlarged the fish hatchery at Pratt to one of the largest and most modern in the country. He also wrote legislation that would protect endangered species and set specific hunting seasons for game birds and most mammals. He was the warden until his death on January 20, 1915.

The Natural History Museum on the University of Kansas campus was renamed the Dyche Museum of Natural History in his honor.