Scoville was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He married Cora B. Upham on September 1, 1891 in Wollaston (Quincy, Massachusetts). They had two daughters: Amy Augusta, born August 21, 1892 and Ruth Upham, born October 21, 1897.

Scoville wrote The Art of Compounding, which was first published in 1895 and has gone through at least 8 editions. The book was used as a pharmacological reference up until the 1960s, also making one of the earliest mentions of milk as an antidote for pepper heat. Scoville also wrote Extracts and Perfumes, which contained hundreds of formulations. For a time he was a professor at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. In 1912, he devised the test and scale known as the “Scoville Organoleptic Test” while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company. While using human testers, it measured pungency, or “spiciness”, of various chili peppers. It is now standardized as the Scoville scale.

In 1922, Scoville won the Ebert prize from the American Pharmaceutical Association and in 1929 he received the Remington Honor Medal. Scoville also received an honorary Doctor of Science from Columbia University in 1929.