Brigadier-General Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence (28 June 1806 – 4 July 1857) was a British military officer, surveyor, administrator and statesman in British India. He is best known for leading a group of administrators in the Punjab affectionately known as Henry Lawrence's "Young Men", as the founder of the Lawrence Military Asylums and for his death at the Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Lawrence was born in June 1806 into an Ulster-Scots family at Matara in Ceylon. Both his parents were from Ulster, the northern province of Ireland. His mother Letitia was the daughter of the Rev. George Knox from County Donegal, while his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander William Lawrence, was born the son of a mill owner from Coleraine, County Londonderry, entered the service of the British Army and achieved distinction at the 1799 Siege of Seringapatnam. The Lawrences had seven sons, the first died in infancy and the fifth at the age of eighteen. The remaining five all achieved distinction in India; of them Sir George Lawrence and Lord Lawrence would achieve particular fame.

In 1812, Lawrence, along with his elder brothers Alexander and George, was sent to Foyle College in Derry, a city in Ulster, where their uncle Rev. James Knox was headmaster. In 1818 he rejoined his parents in Bristol where they had since settled, and completed his schooling there. In August 1820 he again followed his elder brothers by entering the East India Company Military Seminary in Addiscombe, Surrey. (His father, having felt slighted by the lack of recognition afforded to him for his service in the British Army, encouraged his sons to instead enter the service of the East India Company in India.) Whilst at the seminary, he was saved from drowning by a fellow cadet Robert Guthrie MacGregor. On another occasion, he developed sympathy for a lady in poverty, and begged old clothes from his family which he then carried to her through the streets of London. That same lady would be remembered in his will some thirty-five years later. Contemporaries in his class at Addiscombe included Sir Frederick Abbott.

On passing out from Addiscombe in 1822 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery, arriving in India the following year. He was based at the Calcutta suburb of Dum Dum, where Henry Havelock was also stationed about the same time. He soon saw action in the First Anglo-Burmese War, and at the age of 18 Lawrence commanded a battery forming part of the Chittagong column which General Joseph Morrison led over the jungle-covered hills of Arakan. He served for two years in Burma, until the expedition was decimated by fever, and Lawrence nearly perished of the illness. He returned to Dum Dum, before being sent first to Penang and then Canton to convalesce. As these changes in climate failed to affect his health for the better, he was invalided back to England. During his furlough in England, he resided with his family in Bristol, where he would first meet his future wife Honoria Marshall, until the opportunity arose in the autumn of 1828 to assist in the trigonometrical survey in Ireland.

Lawrence set sail for India on 2 September 1829 with his brother John, who had recently completed his studies at the East India Company College. The brothers parted company in Calcutta, and Lawrence rejoined his regiment in Karnal on the Sikh frontier, where his elder brother George was now stationed. In 1831 he was transferred to the horse artillery in Cawnpore and the following year he passed examinations in Hindustani and Persian with the aim of earning a civil service posting.

In 1833 he was appointed an assistant to the Revenue Survey of India by Lord William Bentinck based at Gorakhpur. He was tasked with mapping out and marking the boundaries of villages and fields in certain large districts, classifying them in accordance with the quality of soil and extent of holdings and to investigate and record the rights of claimants. He soon perceived the urgent need for more canals, and more and better roads, urging that "the farmer, the soldier, the policeman, the traveller, the merchant, all want more roads. Cut roads in every direction." During his time with the Survey, Lawrence was known for his zeal, discouragement of cheating and at times harsh treatment of bribe taking. In 1837, the secretary to the Board of Revenue remarked to the Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces:

Captain Lawrence is one of the most experienced and zealous of the officers employed in the survey, and has conducted the process of double survey more successfully than perhaps any other...Captain Lawrence is prepared to guarantee a complete survey of three thousand square miles per annum when the villages average one square mile each.

Lawrence went on to successfully accomplish this guarantee, and earned the nickname "Gunpowder" from James Thomason for his "explosive force which shattered all obstacles". In 1835 his father died, and as such his military pension also ceased, leaving his mother Letitia penniless. Lawrence, along with his brothers, took on the responsibility of remitting allowances for their mother. In July 1837, his sweetheart Honoria Marshall arrived in Hooghly and they married at the Mission Church in Calcutta on 21 August. Honoria accompanied Lawrence to Gorakpur where she became an enthusiastic assistant in his work. By the close of 1837, Lawrence had completed his work in Gorakpur and set out for Allahabad the next district on his list. He continued with the survey until August 1838 when he was ordered to stand ready to rejoin his troop amid talk of war with Afghanistan.