A novel actinomycete, designated strain NX62T, was isolated from desert soil obtained from Isolaginsha, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China. Its taxonomic position was determined using a polyphasic approach. The strain shows the typical morphological and chemotaxonomic features of members of the genus Lentzea: slight to dark yellow substrate mycelia and white to greyish white aerial hyphae fragmenting into rod-shaped elements; meso-diaminopimelic acid in the cell wall peptidoglycan; MK-9(H4) and MK-9(H2) as menaquinones; diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, hydroxy-phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylinositol as main polar lipids; iso-C16:0 and iso-C17:0 as major cellular fatty acids; and DNA G+C content of 70.1 mol%. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain NX62T shows high similarity to Lentzea cavernae SYSU K10001T (99.3%) and Lentzea albida IFO 16102T (98.9%), and formed a monophyletic clade with L. cavernae SYSU K10001T in the phylogenetic tree. Based on a comparison of the phenotypic properties and the low level of DNA–DNA relatedness, strain NX62T can be distinguished from phylogenetically related Lentzea species. Therefore, it is concluded that strain NX62T represents a novel species of the genus Lentzea, for which the name Lentzea isolaginshaensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NX62T (= CGMCC 4.7522T = KCTC 49179T).