Charles Benjamin Chappell was born in Charlottetown on 10 October 1857, the son of William Chappell and Mary Ann Turner. On 25 September 1878 Chappell married Louisa Jane Holman with whom he had two sons, Ernest C. and Frederick John, and two daughters, Carrie and Ethel.

Although listed as a carpenter in the 1881 census, in just a few years he was a partner in the firm of Phillips and Chappell and receiving commissions for work in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. His earliest works were the Charlottetown City Hall in 1887 and many of the buildings on Richmond Street which had been destroyed by fire in 1884. He also designed the Herald Building in Halifax and, for a time maintained an office in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

In 1918 or 1919 he took on as partner, John Marshall Hunter, an architect with a Montreal firm which had built the new St. Dunstan's Basilica. The new firm, known as Chappell & Hunter, Architects, operated out of the Hughes Building on Queen Street.

Together the two architects carried out many significant church and hospital architectural projects both in PEI and the mainland as well as designing and building residential, commercial, and public buildings on the Island. These projects included the Rena MacLean Veterans hospital erected on the grounds of Government House, the new Charlottetown Hospital, Antigonish Hospital, an addition to St. Dunstan's University, and renovations to the Court House in Charlottetown, Falconwood Hospital, and the Prince County Hospital.

In addition, during the later years of his career, Chappell designed Heartz Memorial Hall, Zion Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the Presbyterian Church in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Charles Benjamin Chappell died in 1931.