BUG: pandas-dev#58594

doc/source/whatsnew/v3.0.0.rst

@@ -546,6 +546,7 @@ Interval
 Indexing
 ^^^^^^^^
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.__getitem__` returning modified columns when called with ``slice`` in Python 3.12 (:issue:`57500`)
+- Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.from_records` throwing a ``ValueError`` when passed an empty list in ``index`` (:issue:`58594`)
 -
 
 Missing

pandas/core/indexes/base.py

@@ -7473,9 +7473,12 @@ def ensure_index_from_sequences(sequences, names=None) -> Index:
     --------
     ensure_index
     """
+    from pandas.core.indexes.api import default_index
     from pandas.core.indexes.multi import MultiIndex
 
-    if len(sequences) == 1:
+    if len(sequences) == 0:
+        return default_index(0)
+    elif len(sequences) == 1:
         if names is not None:
             names = names[0]
         return Index(maybe_sequence_to_range(sequences[0]), name=names)

pandas/tests/frame/constructors/test_from_records.py

@@ -148,6 +148,12 @@ def test_from_records_sequencelike_empty(self):
         assert len(result) == 0
         assert len(result.columns) == 0
 
+    def test_from_records_sequencelike_empty_index(self):
+        result = DataFrame.from_records([], index=[])
+        assert len(result) == 0
+        assert len(result.columns) == 0
+        assert len(result.index) == 0
+
     def test_from_records_dictlike(self):
         # test the dict methods
         df = DataFrame(