Automated brain tumor detection is becoming a highly considerable medical diagnosis research. In recent medical diagnoses, detection and classification are highly considered to employ machine learning and deep learning techniques. Nevertheless, the accuracy and performance of current models need to be improved for suitable treatments. In this paper, an improvement in deep convolutional learning is ensured by adopting enhanced optimization algorithms, Thus, Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) based on improved Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO), called G-HHO has been considered. This hybridization features Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) and HHO to give better results, limiting the convergence rate and enhancing performance. Moreover, Otsu thresholding is adopted to segment the tumor portion that emphasizes brain tumor detection. Experimental studies are conducted to validate the performance of the suggested method on a total number of 2073 augmented MRI images. The technique’s performance was ensured by comparing it with the nine existing algorithms on huge augmented MRI images in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, f-measure, execution time, and memory usage. The performance comparison shows that the DCNN-G-HHO is much more successful than existing methods, especially on a scoring accuracy of 97%. Additionally, the statistical performance analysis indicates that the suggested approach is faster and utilizes less memory at identifying and categorizing brain tumor cancers on the MR images. The implementation of this validation is conducted on the Python platform. The relevant codes for the proposed approach are available at: https://github.com/bryarahassan/DCNN-G-HHO .