The son of a prosperous rope maker, Harvey matriculated at Christ College, Cambridge, in 1566, received his bachelor's degree in 1570, and became a fellow at Pembroke Hall (later Pembroke College) that same year. At Pembroke he became an intimate friend of Spenser. In 1578 Harvey became a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and began to study civil law, but in 1585 he failed to be elected master of Trinity Hall and was not admitted to a doctor's degree there. He completed his doctorate in civil law at Oxford University. He later engaged Thomas Nashe (Nashe, Thomas) in a long-running pamphlet war, which had its roots in Harvey's brother Richard, an Anglican minister, having been satirized by Robert Greene (Greene, Robert). Gabriel Harvey replied in 1592 with Foure Letters and Certaine Sonnets, which included a satirical account of Greene's death. Nashe took up his pen in his friend Greene's defense, and Harvey came off much the worse in the ensuing literary combat, which continued until 1599, when the archbishop of Canterbury ordered each man's satires to be burned. In 1598 Harvey petitioned for the mastership of Trinity Hall but again was not elected, and about this time he retired.

Though represented as an argumentative and malicious pedant by some of his contemporaries, Harvey was nonetheless a talented scholar and literary stylist. He entered into print only reluctantly; his few published writings include two lectures on rhetoric, elegies and other verses in Latin, and several elegantly styled letters between himself and Spenser. His chief, though unfulfilled, aim was the introduction of the classical hexameter into English poetry.