It is found in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist montane forests.

The buff-breasted mountain tanager was formally described in 1840 by the French ornithologist Auguste Boissonneau from a specimen collected near Bogotá in Colombia.

[2] The specific epithet is the Latin word for a "head-band".

[3] This species is now placed in the genus Dubusia that was introduced in 1850 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte.