Leavitt's scientific work at Harvard was frequently interrupted by illness and family obligations.
 Her early death, at the age of 53 from stomach cancer, was seen as a tragedy by her colleagues for reasons that went beyond her scientific achievements.
Her colleague Solon I. Bailey wrote in her obituary that "she had the happy, joyful, faculty of appreciating all that was worthy and lovable in others, and was possessed of a nature so full of sunshine that, to her, all of life became beautiful and full of meaning."

"Sitting at the top of a gentle hill," writes George Johnson in his biography of Leavitt, "the spot is marked by a tall hexagonal monument, on top of which sits a globe cradled on a draped marble pedestal.
Her uncle Erasmus Darwin Leavitt and his family also are buried there, along with other Leavitts. ..."
A plaque memorializing Henrietta and her two siblings, Mira and Roswell, is mounted on one side of the monument.
Nearby are the graves of Henry and William James.
There is no epitaph at the gravesite memorializing Henrietta Leavitt's achievements in astronomy.
Leavitt's scientific work at Harvard was frequently interrupted by illness and family obligations.  Her early death, at the age of 53 from stomach cancer, was seen as a tragedy by her colleagues for reasons that went beyond her scientific achievements. Her colleague Solon I. Bailey wrote in her obituary that "she had the happy, joyful, faculty of appreciating all that was worthy and lovable in others, and was possessed of a nature so full of sunshine that, to her, all of life became beautiful and full of meaning."
"Sitting at the top of a gentle hill," writes George Johnson in his biography of Leavitt, "the spot is marked by a tall hexagonal monument, on top of which sits a globe cradled on a draped marble pedestal. Her uncle Erasmus Darwin Leavitt and his family also are buried there, along with other Leavitts. ..." A plaque memorializing Henrietta and her two siblings, Mira and Roswell, is mounted on one side of the monument. Nearby are the graves of Henry and William James. There is no epitaph at the gravesite memorializing Henrietta Leavitt's achievements in astronomy.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt