The rock beauty has a deep oval and strongly compressed body, with a short snout, ending in a small mouth equipped with bristle-like teeth.

[2] The rock beauty is found in the Western Atlantic Ocean where it ranges from Bermuda and the waters off Georgia and Florida in southwards through the Caribbean Sea and along the coasts of South America as far as Rio de Janeiro.

[2] They feed largely on sponges but will also eat corals, zoantharians, bryozoans, gorgonians,[5] tunicates and algae.

The initial larvae have a large yolk sac and lack functional eyes, gut or fins.

[6] The rock beauty was first formally described in 1795 as Chaetodon tricolor by the German physician and naturalist Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) with the type locality given as Brazil.

[7] When Bernard Germain de Lacépède created the genus Holacanthus he used Chaetodon tricolor as the type species.

The specific name of this species, tricolor, refers to the three colour pattern of some adults which have a yellow front and black rear to the body with red fin margins.