Born in Alexandria, Virginia in December 1937, Hare grew up in the U.S. Foreign Service. Traveling with his family, he studied in London just after the war and graduated in 1955 from the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1959, he received a Bachelors degree with high honors from Swarthmore College with a major in political science and minors in history and English literature. He studied international relations at the University of Chicago before passing the Foreign Service examination in 1960.

Hare was Ambassador to Zambia from 1985 to 1988, where, in addition to his bilateral responsibilities, he initiated the first high-level dialogue with the exiled African National Congress of South Africa, then headquartered in Lusaka. From August 1988 to July 1989, he was the principal deputy assistant secretary of State in the Bureau of the Near East and South Asian Affairs of the Department of State.

After retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1991, Hare became the vice president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. In October 1993, he was appointed by President Clinton as Special Envoy to the Angola Peace Process and in this capacity participated in the negotiations that led to the Lusaka Protocol of November 1994. Subsequently, Hare continued to have a close and active involvement with the implementation of the Lusaka agreement, frequently traveling to Angola for meetings with the principals of UNITA and the Angolan government. At the beginning of August 1998, Hare relinquished his responsibilities as special envoy and became the executive director of the US-Angola Chamber of Commerce.

Hare is the author of two books: A Diplomatic Chronicles of the Middle East: A Biography of Ambassador Raymond Hare and Angola’s Last Best Chance of Peace: An Insider's Account of the Peace Process published by the US Institute of Peace (September 1998).