This rare species is an endemic of the Swartberg mountains in the Western Cape province of South Africa.

In 2017, Charles Stirton and A. Muthama Muasya considered it sufficiently different from other Otholobium species, in particular O. polystictum, to distinguish and name it O. lucens.

It regrows from an underground rootstock after a fire destroyed the vegetation and initially produces lush, large, soft, bright green leaves.

From the rootstock emerge many stems that branch near their base, and have a cracked, yellowish-brown to black, scurfy bark.

Its leaves are accompanied at their base by a pair of awl-shaped stipules of 2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) long that are pressed against the stem.

The leaflets are hairless, inverted egg-shaped, with a wedge-shaped base and a blunt tip, but the midvein extends beyond the leaf blade into a hooked point, while both surfaces are adorned with crater-shaped glands of different sizes in equal density, which become shiny orange when dried.

The calyx is about half as long as the corolla, is prominently ribbed and adorned with glands and soft black hair over its entire surface.

[1] Otholobium lucens has similarities with O. polystictum, which is a laxly branched, willowy shrub up to 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) (not a rounded, densely branched subshrub of up to 60 cm), with asymmetrical lateral leaflets (not symmetrical), lance-shaped stipules (not awl-shaped), more and larger glands on upper leaf surface, that become black when dried (not similarly sized and distributed glands on both surfaces, drying orange), oblong bracts subtending the flower triplets (not a fan-shaped bract with several teeth), calyx lobes of about 65% of length of flower (not only half as long as the flower), and a mauve corolla with a reddish purple and white central nectar guide (not white flowers without a nectar guide).

Here, the species grows in Kango Limestone Renosterveld, typically in the transition zone between sandstone and shale derived soils in the foothills of the Groot Swartberg Mountains.