Henry Doughty Tovey, the founder of the University of Arkansas Music Department, was born on January 26, 1884, in New Boston, Illinois. After graduating from the Knox College Conservatory of Music in Galesburg, Illinois in 1904, he was hired as a professor of music at Ouachita College (now Ouachita Baptist University). In 1908, he came to the University of Arkansas, where he developed and served as chair of the music department until his death in 1933. In 1909, Tovey composed the University of Arkansas Alma Mater (a private recording of Tovey playing the Alma Mater on the organ in the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago is currently housed in the Arkansas Alumni Center). While at the university, he directed the Glee Club, and he developed The Musical Coffee Hour, a program held in the Arkansas Union in which participants listened to and discussed Tovey's recordings of selected music.

A renowned musicologist and a talented pianist, Tovey served as an accompanist to the opera singers Mary Gardner and Ernestine Roessler Schumann-Heink. He worked to standardize the music education programs of Arkansas high schools, sending them selected sets of records, articles, and photos of performers. He founded the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association, was vice-president of the National Association of Presidents of State Music Teachers Associations, and served as a member of the National Board of Music.