Lanthanide materials have great applications in optical communication, biological fluorescence imaging, laser, and so on, due to their narrow emission bandwidths, large Stokes' shifts, long emission lifetimes, and excellent photo-stability. However, the photon absorption cross-section of lanthanide ions is generally small, and the luminescence efficiency is relatively low. The effective improvement of the lanthanide-doped materials has been a challenge in the implementation of many applications. The local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) effect of plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) can improve the luminescence in different aspects: excitation enhancement induced by enhanced local field, emission enhancement induced by increased radiative decay, and quenching induced by increased non-radiative decay. In addition, plasmonic NPs can also regulate the energy transfer between two close lanthanide ions. In this review, the properties of the nanocomposite systems of lanthanide material and plasmonic NPs are presented, respectively. The mechanism of lanthanide materials regulated by plasmonic NPs and the scientific and technological discoveries of the luminescence technology are elaborated. Due to the large gap between the reported enhancement and the theoretical enhancement, some new strategies applied in lanthanide materials and related development in the plasmonic enhancing luminescence are presented.