Of noble birth, he was a cousin of Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen (1812–1870), the writer and outstanding public figure; husband to Anna Antonovna and father to Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky (1847–1940), a Peredvizhniki artist who was court photographer to the ill-fated family of Czar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia.

At his parents request he attended and graduated (1839) from the Faculty of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University and soon after served in the Russian civil service with the Ministry of the Interior, St. Petersburg.

His ability to speak several languages allowed him to participate in a government commission to study the composition and therapeutic properties of mineral waters in the Caucasus.

On his mission there in 1843, accompanied by the chemist and botanist Carl Julius Fritzsche, an associate of the chemistry department at the Emperor's Academy of Sciences.

Levitsky's use of the 1840 Charles Chevalier-designed lens, known as the "Photographe à Verres Combinés" as it combined two cemented achromats; reduced the time needed to capture an image as it improved the camera's focusing ability.

In 1845 Levitsky travelled to Rome and Venice in Italy before undertaking a course in physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne in Paris but is not listed as working as a professional photographer.

Showing how skillful combination of natural and artificial light can create interesting effects, Levitsky's photographs became recognized throughout Europe.

Creating images that captured the sentiment of each sitter was in keeping with beliefs found in Russian art of the mid nineteenth century, such as literature, music and theatre where artists believed it was possible to penetrate into the soul of a person.

On a trip to Rome, Sergei photographed a group of prominent Russian painters and writers including Nikolai Gogol, displaying his learned technical advancements.

These photos were major successes for Levitsky and word spread quickly about a studio that had its employees traveling to the homes of customers with their daguerreotype apparatus.

Photo cards of this time have the distinctive Levitsky name 'and Son' Russian: Левицкий и сын both written as a signature and printed on their backs.

[citation needed] During the Soviet era the official government point of view on the development of photography in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period was: "In our country, before the Great October Socialist Revolution there was no photographic industry.

.., the ruling circles of autocracy hampered the development of domestic photography as cameras, plates, and photographic paper were mainly imported from abroad".

In 1978, the decision to set up a photographic section within the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France marked the first recognition and inclusion of works by Sergei Lvovich Levitsky.

In 1992, the vaults of the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk (RGAKFD) were opened to reveal photographic documentation of events from over a century ago to the present in Russia.

Janet E. Buerger, French daguerreotypes,International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House,University of Chicago Press, 1989,