Richard Dogbeh was a novelist and educator. He served as Benin's Directeur de Cabinet of the National Ministry of Education from 1963 to 1966. He was also active in the Comité Consultatif International de Documentation des Bibliothèques et des Archives and then from 1968 to 1979 served as a UNESCO expert on educational systems for much of West Africa. After that he spent his life in Benin. As an author he started early and at 16 won the nation's "Institut Français d'Afrique Noire" prize for a novel. He also published essays, poems, and stories.