Henry Morris worked in commerce and manufacturing before entering public office in Philadelphia. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1802, he travelled to the East Indies as a supercargo on a merchant vessel. This was a commercial appointment concerned with the ship's cargo and trading business, rather than a naval commission. The voyage placed his early working life within the long-distance trade pursued by American merchants after independence.

He subsequently entered manufacturing in Cincinnati and later at Paterson, New Jersey. His work then included acting as an agent to secure rights of way for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad as it extended toward Pennsylvania's coal region. The task connected land transactions with the development of transport for an expanding industrial economy. These activities belonged to Henry's own working life, distinct from the Revolutionary finance and land speculation associated with his father Robert Morris.

Morris married Eliza Jane Smith in 1819; she was the daughter of the New York physician William Pitt Smith. He returned to Philadelphia, where he was elected sheriff in 1841. He died in December 1842 while still holding that office. University and family records identify him as both merchant and sheriff, while the genealogical account supplies his manufacturing and railway work. Together these records document a career moving between maritime trade, inland industry, railway development and county administration.