It was discovered by German astronomer Karl Theodor Robert Luther on April 19, 1855,[6] and named after Leukothea, a sea goddess in Greek mythology.

Its historical symbol was a pharos (ancient lighthouse); it is in the pipeline for Unicode 17.0 as U+1CED0 𜻐 ().

[7][8] Leukothea is a C-type asteroid in the Tholen classification system,[2] suggesting a carbonaceous composition.

It is orbiting the Sun with a period of 5.17 years and has a cross-sectional size of 103.1 km.

Photometric observations of this asteroid from the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico during 2010 gave a light curve with a rotation period of 31.900±0.001 hours and a brightness variability of 0.42±0.04 in magnitude.