The cycle life of lead-carbon battery is greatly restricted by the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) of lead carbon electrode. Lead carbon composite, rather than the pure carbon additive, inhibits the HER effectively, and may also strengthen the connection between lead and carbon components of lead-carbon electrode, which contributes to the performance enhancement of lead-carbon battery. In this paper, a novel lead carbon (C/Pb) composite is prepared by electroless plating lead on the rice-husk-based hierarchical porous carbon. The as prepared C/Pb composite significantly suppresses the HER, and enlarges the electrochemically active surface area of the lead-carbon electrode. As expected, the cycle life of lead carbon battery with the optimized C/Pb composite in negative electrode is >11 times of the blank one under high-rate partial state-of-charge (HRPSoC) operation. This performance improvement is attributed to the enhanced interface between lead and carbon, and the inhibition effect on HER of C/Pb composite.