This article develops an extension of the Rayleigh distribution with two parameters and greater flexibility which is an improvement over Lindley distribution, Rayleigh distribution and other generalizations of the Rayleigh distribution. The new model is known as “odd Lindley-Rayleigh Distribution”. The definitions of its probability density function and cumulative distribution function using the odd Lindley-G family of distributions are provided. Some properties of the new distribution are also derived and studied in this article with applications and discussions. The estimation of the unknown parameters of the proposed distribution is also carried out using the method of maximum likelihood. The performance of the proposed probability distribution is compared to some other generalizations of the Rayleigh distribution using three simulated datasets and a real life dataset. The results obtained are compared using the values of some information criteria evaluated with the parameter estimates of the fitted distributions based on the four datasets and it is revealed that the proposed distribution outperforms all the other fitted distributions. This performance has shown that the odd Lindley-G family of distribution is an adequate generator of probability models and that the odd Linley-Rayleigh distribution is a very flexible distribution for fitting different kinds of datasets better than the other generalizations of the Rayleigh distribution considered in this study.