Pitcairnia feliciana is an endemic plant to central Guinea in West Africa and is the only species of bromeliad not native to the Western Hemisphere. It can be found growing on sandstone outcrops (inselbergs) of the Fouta Djallon highlands in Middle Guinea. Its specific epithet feliciana commemorates Henri Jacques-Félix (1907–2008), the French botanist who first collected it. In 1937, he discovered the plants growing on the steep rocks of Mount Gangan, near Kindia in the former French Guinea.