Arthur Eichengrün was born in Aachen as the son of a Jewish cloth merchant and manufacturer. In 1885, he took up studies in chemistry at the University of Aachen, later moved to Berlin, and finally to Erlangen, where he received a doctoral degree in 1890.
In 1896, he joined Bayer, working in the pharmaceutical laboratory. In 1908, he quit Bayer and founded his own pharmaceutical factory, the Cellon-Werke in Berlin. His company was "Aryanized" by the Nazis in 1938.
In 1943, he was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison for having failed to include the word "Israel" in his name in a letter to a Reich official (Nazi law required Jewish men to be identified as such, as they required Jewish women to identify as "Sarah".). In May 1944, he was arrested again on the same charge and deported to the concentration camp Theresienstadt, where he spent 14 months until the end of World War II in Europe, escaping death.
After the liberation, he returned to Berlin, but moved to Bad Wiessee in Bavaria in 1948, where he died the following year at the age of 82.