The origins and identity of Felice Beato have been problematic issues, but the confusion over the dates and places of his birth and death seems now to have been substantially cleared up. Based on a death certificate discovered in 2009, Beato is known to have been born in Venice in 1832 and to have died on 29 January 1909 in Florence. The death certificate further indicates that he was a British subject and a bachelor. It is likely that early in his life Beato and his family moved to Corfu, at the time part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and so Beato would have qualified as a British subject..

Because of the existence of a number of photographs signed "Felice Antonio Beato" and "Felice A. Beato", it was long assumed that there was one photographer who somehow managed to photograph at the same time in places as distant as Egypt and Japan. But in 1983 it was shown by Chantal Edel that "Felice Antonio Beato" represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, sharing a signature. The confusion arising from the signatures continues to cause problems in identifying which of the two photographers was the creator of a given image.

Little is certain about Felice Beato's early development as a photographer, though it is said that he bought his first and only lens in Paris in 1851. He probably met British photographer James Robertson in Malta in 1850 and accompanied him to Constantinople in 1851. Robertson had been an engraver at the Imperial Ottoman Mint since 1843 and had probably taken up photography in the 1840s. In 1853 the two began photographing together and they formed a partnership called "Robertson & Beato" either in that year or in 1854 when Robertson opened a photographic studio in Pera, Constantinople. Robertson and Beato were joined by Beato's brother Antonio on photographic expeditions to Malta in 1854 or 1856 and to Greece and Jerusalem in 1857. A number of the firm's photographs produced in the 1850s are signed "Robertson, Beato and Co." and it is believed that the "and Co." refers to Antonio.

In late 1854 or early 1855 James Robertson married the Beato brothers' sister, Leonilda Maria Matilda Beato. They had three daughters, Catherine Grace (b. 1856), Edith Marcon Vergence (b. 1859) and Helen Beatruc (b. 1861).

In 1855 Felice Beato and Robertson travelled to Balaklava, Crimea where they took over reportage of the Crimean War following Roger Fenton's departure. They photographed the fall of Sebastopol in September 1855, producing about 60 images.

In February 1858 Felice Beato arrived in Calcutta and began travelling throughout Northern India to document the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. During this time he produced possibly the first-ever photographic images of corpses. It is believed that for at least one of his photographs taken at the palace of Secundra Bagh in Lucknow he had the skeletal remains of Indian rebels disinterred or rearranged to heighten the photograph's dramatic impact (see events at Taku Forts). He was also in the cities of Delhi, Cawnpore, Meerut, Benares, Amritsar, Agra, Simla and Lahore. Beato was joined in July 1858 by his brother Antonio, who later left India, probably for health reasons, in December 1859. Antonio ended up in Egypt in 1860, setting up a photographic studio in Thebes in 1862.

In 1860 Felice Beato left the partnership of "Robertson & Beato", though Robertson retained use of the name until 1867. Beato was sent from India to photograph the Anglo-French military expedition to China in the Second Opium War. He arrived in Hong Kong in March and immediately began photographing the city and its surroundings as far as Canton. Beato's photographs are some of the earliest taken in China.

While in Hong Kong, Beato met Charles Wirgman, an artist and correspondent for the Illustrated London News. The two accompanied the Anglo-French forces travelling north to Talien Bay, then to Pehtang and the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho, and on to Peking and the suburban Summer Palace, Qingyi Yuan. Wirgman's (and others') illustrations for the Illustrated London News are often derived from Beato's photographs of the places on this route.

Beato's photographs of the Second Opium War are the first to document a military campaign as it unfolded, doing so through a sequence of dated and related images. His photographs of the Taku Forts represent this approach on a reduced scale, forming a narrative recreation of a battle. The sequence of images shows the approach to the forts, the effects of bombardments on the exterior walls and fortifications and finally the devastation within the forts, including the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. Interestingly, the photographs were not taken in this order, as the photographs of dead Chinese had to be taken first before the bodies were removed; only then was Beato free to take the other views of the exterior and interior of the forts. In albums of the time these photographs are placed in such a way as to recreate the sequence of the battle.

Beato's images of the Chinese dead — he never photographed British or French dead — and his manner of producing them particularly reveal the ideological aspects of his photojournalism. Dr. David F. Rennie, a member of the expedition, noted in his campaign memoir, “I walked round the ramparts on the West side. They were thickly strewn with dead — in the North-West angle thirteen were lying in one group around a gun. Signor Beato was there in great excitement, characterising the group as ‘beautiful’ and begging that it might not be interfered with until perpetuated by his photographic apparatus, which was done a few minutes afterwards…”. The resultant photographs are a powerful representation of military triumph and British imperialist power, not least for the purchasers of his images: British soldiers, colonial administrators, merchants and tourists. Back in Britain Beato's images were used to justify the Opium (and other colonial) Wars and they shaped public awareness of the cultures that existed in the East.