Rice was born in Dallas, Texas in 1942. He met his future wife in a high school journalism class in Richardson, Texas, and they married in Denton, Texas on October 14, 1961. They briefly attended together North Texas State University in Denton, before moving to San Francisco in 1962, to enroll at San Francisco State University, where they both earned their MA.

Rice was a professor of English and Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. In 1977 he received the Academy of American Poets' Edgar Allan Poe Award for Whiteboy, and in subsequent years was also the recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award as well as a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Rice retired after 22 years as Chairman of the Creative Writing program as well as Assistant Director of the Poetry Center in 1989.

It was the death of his and Anne's first child, daughter Michele (1966–1972), at age six of leukemia, which sparked Stan Rice's becoming a published author. His first book of poems, based on his daughter's illness and death, was titled Some Lamb, and was published in 1975. He encouraged his wife to quit her work as a waitress, cook and theater usher in order to devote herself full-time to her writing, who both eventually encouraged their son, novelist Christopher Rice, to become a published author as well.