It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on 13 March 1785.

The galaxy was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, as part of the HST's main mission to determine the distance to galaxies, and again in 1999 as part of the Hubble Heritage project.

It has been part of an ongoing effort to study its Cepheid variable stars.

The outer arms appear blue due to the continuing formation of young stars and include a possible luminous blue variable with an absolute magnitude of −10.

[8][9] Four supernovae have been observed in NGC 4414: This spiral galaxy article is a stub.