It is found in the Indo-Pacific region from Indonesia to Japan and south to the Great Barrier Reef and Papua New Guinea.

[2] The body color is a bright to orange-yellow with a big black blotch below the dorsal fin and a vertical black bar running through the eye.

[3] The mirror butterflyfish was first formally described in 1831 by the French anatomist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) with the type locality given as Jakarta.

[4] Like the other butterflyfishes with angular yellow bodies with black eyestripes and a single differently-colored patch (except in the quite basal Blue-lashed Butterflyfish, C. bennetti), it belongs in the subgenus Tetrachaetodon.

Among this group it seems to be particularly close to the Zanzibar butterflyfish (Chaetodon zanzibarensis) which has a smaller black blotch and traces of horizontal stripes on the flanks.