Hebel's father, a weaver and batman who loved learning, died when Hebel was little over a year old. As a result, Hebel was brought up amidst poverty-stricken conditions in the village of Hausen im Wiesental, where he received his earliest education. A promising student, he found friends who enabled him to complete his school education and to study theology (1778—1780) at Erlangen.

At the end of his university course he was for a time a private tutor, then became teacher at the gymnasium in Karlsruhe, and in 1808 was appointed director of the school. He was subsequently appointed member of the Consistory and evangelical prelate.Memorials have been erected to him at Karlsruhe, Lörrach, Hausen im Wiesental, Basel and Schwetzingen.

Hebel is one of the most widely read of all German popular poets and writers. His poetical narratives and lyric poems, written in the Alemanic dialect, are popular in the best sense.

His Alemannische Gedichte (1803) bucolicize, in the words of Goethe, the whole world in the most attractive manner (verbauert das ganze Universum auf die anmutigste Weise). Indeed, few modern German poets surpass him in fidelity, naiveté, humour, and in the freshness and vigour of his descriptions.

The anecdotes and tales contained in the Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes belong to the best class of German stories, and according to August Friedrich Christian Vilmar (1800—1868) in his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur are worth more than a cartload of novels (wiegen ein ganzes Fuder Romane auf). Admirers of his work include Goethe, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger.