David Dick was the son of Hugh Dick and Cathrin Somerville and the older brother of Archibald Dick. He was born on 2 February 1769.

While on the Island of Jamaica, David dealt with several businesses and partnered with Taylor Ballantyne, Fairlee and Co. Both Ballantyne and Fairlee were Scottish merchant families who had estates at Ayr and Kilmarnock and were possibly related to David’s mother. John Taylor returned to London in 1792, leaving his clerks David Dick and John McCall to take over the firm and Nicol Graham to become Simon Taylor’s agent. Dick and McCall quarrelled, and the firm was reorganised as Dick Orr and Clark. He was later listed like his brother as Planters and West Indian Proprietors. On 3 December 1795, David was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Militia of Jamaica for the county of Surry.

Around 1810 David returned to Scotland and resided in Ross and Cromarty, close to the Loch. The family's estate counted 24.000 imperial acres, and other clans soon questioned the land rights. In 1813-14 David bought the Glenshiel estate from Lord Seaforth, and in the same year, a compromise was made with the Minister of Kintail for cutting peats of moss near David's home. The following year David married Eliza Mackenzie (born 1 September 1797), sister of Isabelle Mackenzie (future wife of his brother Archibald), on 21 February 1815. The couple received Elizabeth Katherine (28 July 1824), Hugh Sommerville (1831), Colin Mackenzie (1832), Archibald (1834), Simon Mackenzie (1838) and Alexander (1839), all baptised in Resolis or Kiltearn, Cromarty.

On the morning of the 20th of June 1820, David Dick became a victim of a vicious attack while travelling on the zig-zag road at the back of his home. He was chased by several Highlanders, who ultimately killed his horses by driving them off a cliff. After several other attacks on his property and his family, David left Scotland and was listed as the occupant of Amroth Castle, Pembrokeshire, in 1828. 

In the early 1830s, David returned to his former estate in Scotland to sell it to the remaining clans. On 16 July 1833, David died near the shores of the Loch at Hatagain House near his former ruined home. His grave has yet to be discovered. He could never have envisaged Eilean Donan Castle would be restored by the Macraes and become such an important tourist site over one hundred years later. His wife, Eliza Mackenzie, married again Francis Spittal, son of Sir James Spittal of Edinburgh. Francis died unexpectedly shortly after; afterwards, she lived with her youngest son Colin Dick who was still involved in the food commodities market in London in 1861. Eliza Spittal died in the German State of Hesse in 1854 at 54. As adults, three of David and Eliza’s children travelled to New Zealand in the 1840s, then went to Australia. Their son John Graham Dick died in Manilla in the Philippines in 1842. A granddaughter of David Dick, Adela Anderson married into a Stewart family of Athenree and settled in New Zealand.