Ward Ritchie was born in 1905 in Los Angeles, and grew up in a series of residences in the Los Angeles and Pasadena areas. His father was in the pharmaceutical trade. He attended Marengo Avenue School and Occidental College, transferring to Stanford, University of the South, and back to Occidental again. After a brief try at law school at USC he decided to make a career the book arts, influenced by a reading of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson's Journals. By examining examples of fine printing, mainly at the Huntington Library, he learned the elements of book design, and a semester at Frank Wiggins Trade School gave him some technical knowledge. He began printing in 1929. The next year he talked himself into an "apprenticeship" with François Louis Schmied, the French art-deco designer, illustrator, and printer. After four months with Schmied he returned to Los Angeles and a brief job with bookseller Jake Zeitlin.

Ritchie became one of the principal figures in the fine-printing movement in Southern California. He printed for the Primavera Press, and took commissions as the Ward Ritchie Press, which he incorporated in 1932. Gregg Anderson entered into partnership, and the printing firm was subsequently called Anderson & Ritchie, with the name Ward Ritchie Press being retained for publishing ventures. At the outbreak of World War II, Anderson joined the Army (he was killed in 1944), and Ritchie left the press for Douglas Aircraft, where he produced technical manuals. The press continued under the management of Joseph Simon and became a large commercial establishment. Between 1943 and 1950 Ritchie worked as production manager at the advertising agency Foote, Cone and Belding, though he remained associated with the press and did designs for them. In 1950 he returned to the press full-time, and the firm (renamed Anderson, Ritchie & Simon) kept growing until Ritchie retired in 1972. (The press continued under different ownership until 1978.) In his retirement, in Laguna Beach, he bought a hand press and began printing small editions himself under the name Laguna Verde Imprenta. He died early in 1996. Ritchie married, first, Janet Smith (with whom he had two sons), and second, Marka Detrick, who brought three sons from a previous marriage. His close friends included librarian Lawrence Clark Powell and actress and printer Gloria Stuart.