Euryops brownei was first described by Spencer Le Marchant Moore in 1916, based on a plant collected by Browne on Mount Kenya in 1914, now at the Natural History Museum, London. Johannes Mattfeld described Euryops agrianthoides in 1924 based on a collection from Mount Meru by Uhlig. Robert Elias Fries considered a plant he collected in the Aberdare Range at Sattima to be sufficiently different to distinguish it as Euryops brownei subsp. aberdarica in 1928. All these names are now considered synonyms.