Bennett's father Robert Bennett, was organist of what is now Sheffield Cathedral. At the age of three he was an orphan, so he was brought up by his grandfather in Cambridge. At the age of seven he became a chorister at King's College Chapel Choir. In 1826 he entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he spent ten years studying. His piano teachers were W. H. Holmes, Dr William Crotch and later Cipriani Potter 