We give an explicit Dirichlet series for the generating function of the discriminants of quartic dihedral extensions of $\open Q$. From this series we deduce an asymptotic formula for the number of isomorphism classes of such quartic extensions with discriminant up to a given bound. On the other hand, by using essentially classical results of genus theory combined with elementary analytical methods such as the method of the hyperbola, we show how to compute exactly this number up to quite large bounds, and we give a table of selected values.