The hospital opened on 23 August 1976, moving from Leuven to Brussels.

In 1968 the Catholic University of Louvain acquired some land in the east of Brussels, which did not have a large hospital at that time.

When the university split in two, the French-speaking departments moved from Leuven to Ottignies to found the new city of Louvain-la-Neuve, except for the medical faculty and health sciences sector, which moved to a newly built Brussels campus, now called UCLouvain Bruxelles Woluwe.

Being a teaching and university hospital UCLouvain Saint-Luc continues to do ground breaking medical research.

For example, the first baby born after ovarian transplant[2] and the first photograph of human ovulation.