Church origins date back to 1854 when an orphanage, located in Las Condes road on lands pertaining to the Lo Chacón estate (owned and transferred by the national hero Arturo Prat’s grandfather) was founded and managed by the Sisters of Providence order.

In 1881, a project to renew the building and façade was developed and commissioned to Italian Franciscan priest Eduardo Provasoli. His project involved the main chapel, the cloister and more than 20 patios. The new building had a population of nearly 1,300 children. The church was finished in 1890. According to historical records, the name of the Providencia commune comes from the order in charge of the orphanage and the big church.

This organization remained until 1941 when the order handed over the control of the orphanage. In 1955, the orphanage was definitively closed to give way to a thorough modernization of the sector. The estate was divided into lots that were sold to different buyers. From this division that later became the so-called Remodelación Providencia (Revamping Providencia) and from the original orphanage buildings only remained the cloister and the big church, whose control was handed over to the Archbishop of Santiago.

By late 1970, the church was about to disappear, because a realty project on the site was in process of being approved. However, cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez rejected such an idea, and the church stood in place. Thus, in 1978, priest Augusto Larraín commissioned architect Ernesto Labbé the refurbishment of certain areas of the original 1890 building. The project involved revamping the cloister and reinforcing the tower with concrete and iron, with a metal structure inside in order to enhance resistance.

Thanks to this revamping and over the years, in 1989 the church and the parish house were declared National Monuments.

Nevertheless, the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that struck south-central Chile seriously damaged the church: the tower dome collapsed and cornices and ornaments were destroyed. In 2012, the city hall together with the Archbishop of Santiago and the National Council for the Arts and Culture allocated 200 million pesos for their reconstruction. This new project was again commissioned to architect Ernesto Labbé. The project based on the original ideas of drawings, but a lighter and anti-seismic structure was generated in order to withstand future earthquakes, because the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Divina Providencia is a «transcendental icon for Santiago, and one of the most important patrimonial buildings in Providencia,” said the mayor in an interview.