Whether Barre was a native of England or of Normandy is unknown, but his surname appears to derive from the Norman village of Le Barre, near Lisieux, in the present day department of Eure. Barre had a relative, Hugh Barre, who was Archdeacon of Leicester in the 1150s, and other relatives were the Sifrewast family, knights in Berkshire. Barre attended the law school at Bologna before 1150, and was a student there with Stephen of Tournai, who later became Bishop of Tournai in 1192. Barre's first service after school was with either Robert de Chesney, the Bishop of Lincoln or with Nicholas, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, as Barre witnessed charters for both men in the period 1160 though 1164. By 1165, Barre joined the household of King Henry II of England.

Barre served King Henry during the king's quarrel with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had gone into exile in 1164 over the dispute about the limits of royal authority over the Church. Because of Barre's close ties to King Henry, Becket considered Barre one of the king's "evil counselors", and was the subject of denunciations by the archbishop. During January and February 1170, Barre was sent by the king to Rome on a diplomatic mission to the pope connected with the Becket dispute.

After the murder of Becket in December 1170, Barre was sent to Rome by King Henry, along with the archbishop of Rouen, the bishops of Évreux and Worcester, and other royal clerks, in order to plead the royal case with the papacy. Although the mission was not a complete success, the royal commission did manage to persuade the papacy to not impose an interdict on England or to excommunicate the king. Shortly after this, Barre was rewarded with the office of Archdeacon of Lisieux, probably as a reward for his efforts at the papacy. He was a royal justice at Oxford in 1172, for he was named a justice "in curia domini Regis" in September. He was named chancellor to King Henry's eldest living son, Henry for a brief period in 1172 and 1173, but when the younger Henry rebelled against his father and sought refuge at the French royal court, Barre refused to join him in exile, and returned to the king's service. Barre brought with him the younger Henry's seal.

Besides the Lisieux archdeaconry, Barre held the prebend of Hurstborne and Burbage in the Diocese of Salisbury from 1177, and the prebend of Moreton and Whaddon in the Diocese of Hereford from 1180 through 1184. He continued to hold the archdeaconry at Lisieux until 1188, and was at Lisieux for most of the late 1170s and 1180's. In 1187, Barre was once more employed on a diplomatic mission by King Henry, being sent to the continent with letters to the German Emperor, the King of Hungary and the Emperor at Constantinople to secure aid for King Henry's projected crusade.

After the death of King Henry, Barre joined the service of William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely, who was justiciar and Lord Chancellor. Longchamp named Barre as Archdeacon of Ely, and he held the office by 4 July 1190. Longchamp sent Barre as a royal justice to the counties near Ely in 1190. Longchamp's exile in 1191 meant that Barre did not serve as a royal justice again until King Richard I returned to England in 1194. Although Barre returned to England, Longchamp did not return to his diocese, and much of the administration of Ely would have devolved on Barre during Longchamp's absence.

Barre was one of the main royal justices for the period 1194—1199. He also served as a lawyer for the new Bishop of Ely, Eustace. However, Barre had encurred the hostility of the king's younger brother Prince John, and when John succeeded Richard as king in 1199, Barre ceased to be employed as a royal justice, instead returning to Ely and business in his clerical office. His last sure mention in the historical record is on 9 August 1202, when he was servicing as a judge-delegate for Pope Innocent III, but he may have been alive as late as 1213. Barre retained his friendship with Stephen of Tournai, who corresponded with him later in their lives.

Barre wrote a work on the Bible entitled Compendium de veteri et novo testamento, which he dedicated to William Longchamp. The work arranged passages from the Bible under topics, and then annotated the work with marginal notations such as were done with glosses on Roman law. It is still extant in two manuscript copies, MS British Library Harley 3255, and Lambeth Palace MS 105. The Harley manuscript is shorter than the Lambeth manuscript, which in the words of Richard Sharpe, a modern historian who studied the work, "provides [a] well structured and systematic (though not complete) coverage of the whole Bible." Because of the dedication to William Longchamp, and the fact that Longchamp, who is named as "bishop, legate, and chancellor" but was driven into exile in October 1191, it is likely that the work was composed between January 1190 and October 1191. The prologue to the work describes it as something to be used privately, and thus Sharpe feels that it was not intended to be a publicly published work, instead Barre may have intended it for Longchamp's private use in preparing sermons.

A third copy of Barre's Compendium may have existed at Leicester Abbey, where a late 15th century library catalogue records a work by Barre on the testaments, and is titled "Compendium Ricardi Barre super utroque testamento", which makes it likely to be a copy of the Compendium. The same catalog also records that five books once owned by Barre were owned by the Abbey — copies of Gratian's Decretum, Justinian's Codex, glossed copies of the Psalter and some of the Letters of St. Paul, as well as Peter Lombard's Sentences. Also, another Leicester Abbey manuscript records some satirical verses that were said to be Barre's.