diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
index 76ba4a5f723fa..e84c8beeadcc7 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt
@@ -236,7 +236,7 @@ Bug Fixes
 
 - Bug in ``TimedeltaIndex`` addition where overflow was being allowed without error (:issue:`14816`)
 - Bug in ``astype()`` where ``inf`` values were incorrectly converted to integers. Now raises error now with ``astype()`` for Series and DataFrames (:issue:`14265`)
-
+- Bug in ``describe()`` when passing a numpy array which does not contain the median to the ``percentiles`` keyword argument (:issue:`14908`)
 
 
 
diff --git a/pandas/core/generic.py b/pandas/core/generic.py
index 48d799811aa94..3678168890444 100644
--- a/pandas/core/generic.py
+++ b/pandas/core/generic.py
@@ -5262,6 +5262,9 @@ def describe(self, percentiles=None, include=None, exclude=None):
             raise ValueError("Cannot describe a DataFrame without columns")
 
         if percentiles is not None:
+            # explicit conversion of `percentiles` to list
+            percentiles = list(percentiles)
+
             # get them all to be in [0, 1]
             self._check_percentile(percentiles)
 
diff --git a/pandas/tests/test_generic.py b/pandas/tests/test_generic.py
index 84df82db69f77..3500ce913462a 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/test_generic.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/test_generic.py
@@ -996,6 +996,13 @@ def test_describe_percentiles_insert_median(self):
         self.assertTrue('0%' in d1.index)
         self.assertTrue('100%' in d2.index)
 
+    def test_describe_percentiles_insert_median_ndarray(self):
+        # GH14908
+        df = tm.makeDataFrame()
+        result = df.describe(percentiles=np.array([.25, .75]))
+        expected = df.describe(percentiles=[.25, .75])
+        assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
     def test_describe_percentiles_unique(self):
         # GH13104
         df = tm.makeDataFrame()