founder and first superior general of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Ireland (Christian Brothers (Christian Brother)), a congregation of nonclerics devoted exclusively to educating youth.

Rice inherited a business in Waterford from his uncle and became a prosperous merchant. He married in 1785, but after his wife's sudden death four years later, he resolved to devote himself to the education of poor boys. Rice opened his first school in Waterford in 1802, followed by others in Cork, Dublin, and Limerick. Then, in 1808, he and seven companions took vows. His institute received papal approval in 1820, and in the following year Rice became Brother Ignatius as the institute's first superior general. When ill health forced him to retire in 1838, other Christian Brothers communities had been founded in England and Australia. J.D. Fitzpatrick's Edmund Rice appeared in 1945.