The species was first described by Edward Bagnall Poulton and Norman Denbigh Riley in 1923.

The specific name honours its original collector, Cyril Leslie Collenette, a member of the 1925 St George Expedition to French Polynesia.

[4] However, a survey by Akito Y. Kawahara and Emmanuel Toussaint in 2018 designates it as endangered using the IUCN 3.1 criterion, but with an overall lack of sightings it is possibly extinct.

[5] It is threatened by deforestation because encroaching Caribbean pine tree farms incentivize clearing the host plant Celtis pacifica from the Toovii Plateau of Nuku Hiva.

Currently it is believed that L. collenettei is a sister taxon to the remainder of the genus Libythea.